Where Pork Comes From

We eat a lot of pork between and during Christmas and Three Kings day, and we get our pork from my wife's cousins, who live a bit up the mountain from us. Juan and Jose raise a few dozen pigs a year, and during the holiday season, they will butcher a dozen or more. We witnessed this one from start to finish, and it wasn't nearly as grizzly has I feared. It didn't even smell that bad. I'll spare you the actual dispatching of the pig, and if you're squeamish, you won't want to watch these videos.



The beautiful young lady in the video is 12 years old, and all the family's children participate.



Practically no part of the pig is wasted. Here, Juan is preparing the intestines for morcilla: sausage made of pig blood and rice. I never developed a taste for this particular delicacy. Juan's wife will finish cleaning the intestines, and make the morcilla.



And here, Jose is remove the meat from the head, which will be smoked.