Experiences in Moldova and beyond: 150. Hog Harvesting

In my village, you can only purchase at the local stores salami, sausages, frozen chicken, and frozen or salted fish when it comes to meat. If you wanted specific cuts of meat or fresh meat you must travel to the nearest city which is 15 miles away.

One reason you cannot purchase fresh mean in the village very readily is because many grow and butcher their own chickens, ducks, pigs, etc. I assisted my host family slaughter one of our pigs. Unlike most Americans, I have actually helped butcher a pig before so it was not a new or shocking experience. But they did butcher the pig differently than I had experienced.

We purchased the pig about three months before we butchered it. At the time it weighed about 210 pounds. The pig could have easily been over 300 pounds when we butchered it.

First thing we had to do, was to go around the neighborhood to see if any able bodied men were willing to help us, at least for the beginning park. The group ended up being six people, my host dad, host brother, three neighbors and me. We left the pig out of its pen and into a larger fenced area. My host dad did not trust his pistol to work properly so all five of us pounced on the hog and laid it on its side. We then held it down as my host dad stabbed its heart.

We then pulled the pig to the front of the house, outside of the gates. There we burnt off the hair as well as cooked the skin of the hog. Many do this process using a propane torch but the more traditional (and tastier) way to do this is to burn the hair with straw. They would throw some straw on it and then after the fire died down we would use knives to scrap off the hair and charred areas to see if it the skin was fully cooked.

Then we put some hot water on it and covered it with plastic and blankets. Then everyone relaxed. I was really confused. We had not drained the blood yet (which I thought had to be the first thing done) and everyone was just relaxing. I then found out that they were letting the skin that had been cooked and hardened to soften up. We then proceeded to scrub the pig with brushes and hot water and the scrapping the skin clean with knives.

After the pig was clean then we cut off the head and let the blood drain and started butchering the pig. There are no photos because I was busy helping. We used just about everything from the pig. The intestines were used as casings for the sausages. The film around the stomach was used to make patties that were made of up meat, the heart, lungs, kidneys and probably some other things. They cut out the loin, bacon and the skin is considered a treat and best eaten the day of the butchering. The rest of the meat was ground up to use in the sausages and the meat around the bones was left and the bones chopped into small chunks so that they could be used for making soup. The head was cut up and boiled for a while; I am not really such what was done with that. All of the fat/lard was ground up and bottled to be used in cooking and such in the future.