I wrote a blog post several months ago about our struggle with getting our animals into a locker after Covid hit last spring. We were able to get everything int a locker or sold directly to people this past year (praise the Lord), but some of our hogs got way too fat while they were waiting around. We felt helpless. We didn’t want to feel that way again, so we prayed about the possibility of building something to process animals on the farm. While we would have preferred to build something new, we quickly realized that it wasn’t an option, since we don’t do anything with debt.

Along with milking, weeding, hilling, watering, picking and processing strawberries, moving animals, keeping us all clean and fed, our house in order, and the yard in decent shape, we are fixing up the lean of our old barn to be able to process all of our own animals, as well as chickens for our customers. We are hoping to be processing lambs for other people by 2022. I have had a hard time getting lambs in to one of our processors in Wahoo, and with a 50% increase in the price of processing at our other processor in Aurora, which equals almost $6 per pound to process lamb, we need to do something different to keep this business going. There is a greater demand for lamb as people realize how nutrient dense and highly digestible, pastured, grain-free lamb is, and we haven’t been able to meet that yet.

 I have talked with several moms over the years that say lamb was or is at the top of their list as food they could or can eat that didn’t upset their breast-fed babies. I too struggled with one of my babies and found lamb to be one of the few things that I could eat at that time, but had a really hard time sourcing good quality. By processing our own lambs, I believe will be able to serve more people. We are learning all we can about processing and won’t commit to doing it for others until we are really good at it and have everything set up in a way that is easy to keep clean. Most of our lambs are already spoken for this coming year (all of our appointments are filled), but we may have a few to process for people in the later winter.

We are also considering processing pork for some of our customers. I have been researching and experimenting with more natural cures for years, and until my smoker caught fire, we were all really liking the results we were seeing. After the processing area is done, we will be building a big smoker to be able to cold or hot smoke our own pork as well as other meats. Our pastured hogs all grow at different rates, and I would love to be able to process them at just the right time, but we have to make appointments 1 to 2 years in advance so it’s a guessing game when you don’t even have piglets born yet. I also believe there would be little to no stress on the animal.  

It’ hard to be patient when you are so excited about something, but we also know that doing things slowly without debt will produce the best results. I know we will be so thankful when it’s done and we don’t have the worry of making a payment. I also realize that processing is very time consuming and very hard physical work, so we will continue to pray about the hogs. Have you ever processed anything? We love to hear from you!