All bacon is NOT created equal

Let me first say that if you are kosher or vegetarian, you may not want to read this post.  But, if you love bacon, this one is for you!  Today I had the most delicious bacon I have ever put in my mouth.  Please forgive me if it sounds like I am bragging.  That is not my intent!  My intent is simply to say that I have now had to opportunity to taste some of our first pork that we have raised here on the farm.  It is delicious!  I have heard over and over again that any meat that you raise yourself will taste much better than anything you can buy in the store, and let me just tell you firsthand it is true!!

This morning my husband prepared the most delicious breakfast of pancakes, bacon and sausage.  Yes, we had to taste the sausage too.  :)  The pancakes were made with fresh buttermilk that I made myself.  They were light, fluffy and dripping with maple syrup.  Yum!!  The sausage looked different than any I had seen from the store.  It had just the right amount of spice and flavor.  Although it was marbled with fat, it left very little drippings in the pan.  But the bacon, ohhhhhh the bacon!  It was simply mouthwatering!  It was thick sliced, and it was sweet and smokey.  It fried up beautifully in the pan, and it was tender with just a slight amount of chewiness.  Is that a word?  LOL!  Anyway, the bacon was outstanding!  It made all the waiting of raising the pigs and sending them to the butcher worthwhile.

As for the raising of the pigs, they were very easy.  I had no idea what to expect, and I had heard horror stories about them.  We had a very good experience with our little piggies.  When my husband brought them home, the two of them fit in a large cat carrier.  We fed them for about 4 1/2 months, and they grew very quickly.  Sometimes it almost felt like you could watch them grow.  They were always happy to get fed, and they would happily gobble up anything you gave them.  We fed them table scraps (no pork), milk and whey, and hog feed. They didn't have much grass, but they would root around and dig up whatever they could find.  They were very tame, and loved it when you scratched them on the head.

After they were gone, I discovered just how wonderful pig manure is as a fertilizer for my garden.  I had a manure pile close to the pig pen, and now I have some of the prettiest tomato plants growing there.  The best part is that they grew there all on their own!  I also have some of the strangest looking plants that I thought for the longest time were peppers.  It turns out they are tomatilla plants.  They are huge and covered with blossoms.  (We had fed some to the pigs once.  Haha!)

So, will we grow pigs again?  YES, YES, YES!!!  We now have a freezer full of pork.  320 pounds of it to be exact.  The pigs weighed in at 240 pounds and 275 pounds, and they dressed out at 145 and 175 respectively.  We figure it cost us about $1.75 a pound overall from start to finish.  So far we have only tried the sausage, bacon and pork steaks.  They were all fantastic.  I can hardly wait to try the other stuff in my freezer.  :)  John and I just planted about 300 corn plants in their old pen.  After we harvest it, we will buy a couple more piggies and throw them in with the old corn stalks.  They will love it!  Well, I've rambled a bit too long as usual, and my timer for my next batch of cheddar cheese is going off.  I gotta go!