'For The Hog Killing' by Wendell Berry

Friends, a real treat for you today. We are still reeling from our recent visit with Hand Hewn Farm , who joined us and our friends at Valley Spirit Farm (one of Our Home Place Meat's founding farms), along with a select few community members and students for a 3-day hog slaughter, butchering, and cookery workshop. This event was an absolute revelation about the history of and possibilities for on-farm processing for small scale livestock farmers, historical butchering and charcuterie techniques, and how to make good farming with livestock pay dividends for the farm and the farmer.
We can’t say enough good things about the instruction, the education, and the general goodness these new friends brought along. We’re hopeful that this will be the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership, and we’ll be showing you more from their visit on our website soon. For now, here is a short video with a few images from the first morning of the workshop, including Wendell Berry’s poem, ‘For The Hog Killing’, that he was gracious enough to open the day with, a tradition that goes back years for the Hand Hewn crew.
Again, all our thanks to Doug and Andy from Hand Hewn Farm and Seth from Six Buckets Farm for staging this event so beautifully, Caleb and Kelly Fiechter from Valley Spirit Farm for hosting the crew and supplying a superb hog for the workshop, and our own Mary Berry and Beth Douglas from Our Home Place Farm for putting this thing on and making it run smoothly. We hope you’ll join us at the next one, friends.
www.berrycenter.org
www.handhewnfarm.com
Music: Number 1 from Ten Simple Pieces for Piano by @robcollier www.robcolliermusic.com
Video by Ben Aguilar

[@redfeather4452]

Profound~♡~ one of the saddest days of my life was saying goodbye to my Barnie and Porky* Didn't realize that all the joyful days with them would end the way they did- hard to know those things seeing the world and life through a child's eyes~ today one of my dearest friends is my butcher~♡~ su-ee*

[@Dana9437]

This is so poignant. Brings my mother to mind, who was raised on a farm. In her oral history, she discussed hog killing.