A few weekend’s ago, my husband and I settled down to a free movie on Hulu. Our choice for the night? King Corn. If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it. I learned a lot that I did not know about meat production and how cows are fed (and treated) at conventional farms.
Of course, we haven’t bought conventional beef in quite some time. For the last two years, all of our beef has come from my cousin’s husband. While he isn’t officially an organic farmer, he raises small batches of cows, and they are free to graze. They do eat some corn, but it is only a small portion of their diet, unlike many conventionally raised cows. Seriously, watch King Corn.
After the movie, we decided it was time to investigate buying a side of pig. As luck would have it, my cousin e-mailed me the very next morning to say her husband had bought 3 sides of hog and one was ours to buy if we would like. Best of all, her husband’s friend raises his pigs as he raises his cow, which is close to organic. Even though money is tight, we jumped on the offer.
Here is what we ended up with:
- Pork Steaks – 3 packages
- Bratwurst – 3 packages
- Breakfast Sausage – 9 packages
- Boneless Pork Loin Roast – 1 package
- Pork Spare Ribs – 1 package
- Pork Baby Back Ribs – 1 package
- Pork Chops – 3 packages
- Pork Loin Roast – 1 package
- Smoked Ham Roast – 1 small package and one 10.5 lb. roast!
- Pork Steak – 1 package
- Smoked Pork Hock – 1 package
- Bacon – 9 packages (over a pound each)
- Smoked Ham Slices – 3 packages
The total weight for all of this was 77 pounds. We paid $280, so we bought all of this pork at the price of $3.63 per pound.
Have you bought a side of pork before?
Wow, good deal! I haven’t bought a side of pork before, but my friends and I are thinking about splitting a cow. We like beef and I can get 100 pounds of different cuts for around $400. I have not watched King Corn, but if it is going to screw up my steak nights, I think I will be avoiding it… 😉
It just might change the kind of steaks you buy. 🙂
This year we purchased 1/2 a cow. Prior to that we had purchased 1/4th, but decided that 1/2 would be better. It was all great until my daughter accidentally unpluggled the freezer. Eeeek! I spent a Saturday afternoon cooking A LOT of beef! Now I have meals for the entire month of December. LOL!
That is terrible! At least you caught what happened before all of the meat was ruined.
A good friend of mine buys pork shoulders and smokes them on a smoker he has in his back yard. It is some of the best pulled pork barbecue I’ve ever had! Not sure if I could fit that much pork in my freezer though.
Wow. He has a smoker in his backyard? That is impressive! Some of our pork was smoked at the meat packing place.