Last year I was on the hunt, so to speak, for a farm that sells half hogs. The caveat here is I didn’t want to pay obscene prices – and in Washington that seems to be pretty hard. You see farmer’s markets these days selling eggs for $7 a dozen and I’m wondering if vendors are starting to take advantage of this new way of eating. Don’t get me wrong, I love this new way – but I ain’t paying $7 for free-range, organic eggs when I know I can go to The Viking sells the same exact farm fresh product for $2.50.
Photo courtesy of Ebey Farms
So, like I said, I was on a mission. And after a year of searching for the right guy I found Bruce King at Ebey Farms. He’s a won’t-hold-anything-back type of farmer. When we talked about the pigs we talked a lot about KILLING them, because let’s face it – that’s what we’re doing here. But he also talked about how he feeds his piggies on discarded grocery store produce, and was considerate to the fact that I was a newbie to this whole half hog killing thing.
After a few weeks and a $50 deposit later, he emailed me to let me know my piggie was about 100 lbs and ready to be handled at the butcher, Silvania Meats. Another fine establishment that wants to just cut to the chase and handle your order quickly and correctly. After a 5-minute phone call explaining what we wanted, and then a few more weeks of waiting we finally got bacon, pork chops, links, jowl, butt, you name it, we probably still have it in our freezer.
We ended up spliting the half hog with 2 other couples because a) we don’t have that big of a freezer and b) we don’t want to eat pig every day for the next decade. All together, for about 30 lbs the price per pound was CRAZY CHEAP. Like Goodwill cheap. We thought the butcher was mistaken or something went wrong, but alas – the guy insisted that the price was right and we happily went home to stuff the pig in our freezer and plan our next meal.
If you’re interested in eating lots of pig please, please, please, contact Bruce King today.
