wcfoodies:

Hog Butchering Demo by The Piggery at Jimmy’s No. 43

Last week, I squeezed into the small but efficient kitchen of one of my favorite restaurants, Jimmy’s No. 43 on the Lower East Side, to help with the kickoff to Pig Week. Brad and Heather, the farmers and butchers of the Piggery, near Ithaca, NY, had brought down half a hog (plus the head, obviously) and some of their farm-made sausages and paté for the lunch, which we cooked up in batches and served buffet-style to the pig-hungry crowds. There was live bluegrass in the back for anyone who didn’t feel up to eating pig while watching a pig butchering.

So what is Pig Week, and why do we need one? Pig Week was a celebration not only of all things porcine, but also all things regional, sustainable, and farm-related. Jimmy Carbone, the owner of Jimmy’s, has always used his kitchen and menu to promote and support regional farmers and specialty produce and meats; over the past couple years, he’s expanded his farm-friendly philosophy to make Jimmy’s No. 43 a pickup location for a growing number of CSAs. 

And that’s what Pig Week was all about: promoting and celebrating an all-pork CSA, perhaps the first of its kind, from the Piggery. 

We’ll hopefully be doing more with the Piggery in the future, but here’s a little background information on the farm and their pigs. Brad and Heather have been butchering hogs for about 7 years and raising their own pigs for 5. They breed selectively, crossing old, endangered breeds of pigs with newer breeds, to create animals that are both healthier and tastier than any supermarket ham. They pasture raise their pigs to 9 months of age, which is about double the age of slaughter for factory farm-raised pigs.

Brad and Heather have such a strong respect for and bond with their pigs that at one point during the butchering, Brad stopped to take a closer look at the half hog in front of him to figure out which pig it was. It was an extremely poignant moment for the audience at Jimmy’s: here we were, with the farmer who’d raised the food we were eating, with a hog he knew personally before him.

And this is what’s so intrinsically fantastic about small, regional family farms: the connection from animal to farmer to consumer is something real and tangible. Factory farms may be large and efficient, but they can never foster that connection of respect and care you get from your CSA or market farmer, whether the farm produces pigs, beets, or oranges.

Stay tuned for my account of what it was like working in an actual kitchen, if only for a day, along with the recipes for the sandwiches we made for the farm-style Piggery lunch at Jimmy’s No. 43.