When all was said and done yesterday, it turned out we had about 500 extra pounds of tomatoes on our hands (and that’s assuming you come in a lot this week to eat BLTs).
Also, yesterday, we received 2 barley-fed pigs we had ordered a while ago, from Jesse Jutz in Minnesota via Eden Farms. They were too big to cryovac, which meant that we had to break them down today as well. Totalling 500 pounds of barley-fed Berkshire pork.
When you have 500 pounds of tomatoes, and 500 pounds of pork, all of which has to be handled immediately, there’s only one thing to do: set up a Brady-Bunch-like competition between the girls’ kitchen and the boys’ kitchen, and get to work canning and butchering. Being pre-industrialists, we stuck with the traditional sex roles and the boys cut the meat. (Being no fool, I worked with the women.)
It was actually a pretty long day for everyone. Both canning and butchering are plenty of work.
The guys of were separating out the pig into its many parts, some for sausages and cured meats, some for hams, some for pork chops and pulled pork.
At the end of the day, we had gotten all of the pig broken down and most of the tomatoes canned (I guess that means my team lost).
Of course, this is just the beginning — we still have to cure and cook it all down the road.
But at least when you see that we have local heirloom tomatoes on our menu in December, you’ll know how that happened.