What You Get When You Buy a Whole Hog

Did you ever wonder what you get when you buy a whole hog directly from the farmer?

My cousin, whose husband is a Angus beef farmer, sold us 1/2 a pig last year from his friend’s farm.  We loved it, so this time he was able to get the whole hog for us.

Wow!  It’s a lot of meat!

We paid $545, and in return we got 144 pounds of meat.  Here’s what we got:

Sliced bacon–14 packages

Ham slice–6 packages

Smoked ham roast–2

Smoked pork hock–2

Smoked whole ham–1 (this baby is 19 lbs!  I don’t know what we’re going to do with that much meat at one time!)

Pork steak–9

Pork chops–7

Pork sausage–13

Bratwurst–6 packages of 5 each

Pork spare ribs–2

Baby back ribs–2

Pork loin roast–3

We ended up paying $3.78 a pound for the pork.

Besides the price, best of all, is that it’s from a local farmer.

Because of our food intolerances, we eat much more meat than we did, say, 3 years ago.  Buying direct from the farmer is one way we can keep this expense reasonable while still eating meat that is raised in a humane way rather than on a feed lot.