A Visit to a High School Hog Butchering Day
By Andrew Jenner
The four hogs arrive at the back of the school, skinned and halved in the bed of a pickup, well before the opening bell on an icy Tuesday morning. It’s a banner day for the Future Farmers of America (FFA) students at Broadway, Virginia's Broadway High School: hog butchering. Scrub the class schedule. There’s a half-ton of live weight to process by the end of the afternoon.
Broadway is in a rural part of the state, on the northern end of Virginia’s biggest farming county. More than 100 of the school’s 1,000 students enroll in one of its agriculture classes. Fifty-four kids belong to the FFA here, and for the past three winters, they’ve spent a day butchering.
They lay the halves out on tables in the school’s workshop, where they’re set upon by groups of students trimming off the fat with boning knives. There’s a Sawzall for when more firepower’s needed to get through bigger bones. They carve out the hams and loins, which they’re going to barbecue and serve for the FFA banquet later in the spring. Almost everything else is bound for the sausage grinder. Each half comes apart relatively quickly, but there are four hogs to cut up, process and package. There’s a long day ahead.
“It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it,” says Christine Yankey, a senior and this year’s president of the school’s FFA chapter.
Once the sausage is ground and seasoned and packaged, the FFA will offer it to teachers and others at the school, at a suggested donation of $4 per pound. They can’t sell it outright, because there isn’t a USDA inspector here, wandering around to check things out.
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http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/visit-high-school-hog-butchering-day/
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They should learn to get their pork chops at Kroger like everyone else!
