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Animal Harvesting, Discipline In Abundance And Domestic Order With Brandon And Lauren Sheard
294 Plays1 year ago
Brandon and Lauren Sheard are the operating duo of Farmstead Meatsmith. Journeying together into an appreciation for artistry and mastery of animal husbandry, slaughter and butchery, their commitment to the Catholic Faith shines as a theme of inspiration enveloping an openness to Grace.
Episode Introduction:
"Brandon Sheard came into traditional livestock harvesting after studying Shakespeare in graduate school.
With no experience in butchery or agriculture, he quit his job at Whole Foods Market, and started work on a small, multi-species and pasture-based farm in the Pacific Northwest. After two years of working on the farm and managing the butcher shop, Brandon left and started Farmstead Meatsmith with his wife Lauren who had journeyed with him from academia to agriculture.
Today the Sheards live in northeastern Oklahoma with their nine children, teaching the art of animal harvesting and provisioning on the domestic scale. You can learn the craft of artful slaughter at Farmsteadmeatsmith.com where they host the Meatsmith Membership and post a full calendar of undiluted, hands-on classes in animal harvesting according to the traditions of the peasant home.
We are excited to bring you this interview as a production of Little Way Farm and Homestead. If you are interested in helping this podcast grow and reach a larger audience, please consider leaving a review wherever you are listening. And, for more information about Little Way Farm and Homestead, or to contact us, please visit www.LittleWayHomestead.com."
Other Notes:
Farmstead Meatsmith Website: https://farmsteadmeatsmith.com/
Upcoming Farmstead Meatsmith Events: https://farmsteadmeatsmith.com/upcoming-classes/
Membership Courses: Farmstead Meatsmith Membership
Farmstead Meatsmith Podcast: A Meatsmith Harvest
Farmstead Meatsmith Youtube Channel: Farmstead Meatsmith
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Little Way Farm Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast. Little Way Farm and Homestead is a regenerative and educational farm in southeastern Indiana. Motivated by the Catholic faith, we strive to inspire, encourage, and support the development of homesteads and small-scale farms in faith and virtue. I'm Matthew. And I'm Karissa. We're excited for you to join us on the podcast.
Interview with Brandon and Lauren Sheard
00:00:24
Speaker
On this episode, we had an opportunity to meet with Brandon and Lauren Sheard. This was a great conversation that was insightful to us as we consider how to be better stewards, not just of animals while they are alive, but of the proper use and end of meat in our farm and homestead.
Brandon's Journey to Farmstead Meatsmith
00:00:39
Speaker
Brandon Sheard came into traditional livestock harvesting after studying Shakespeare in graduate school.
00:00:44
Speaker
With no experience in butchery or agriculture, he quit his job at Whole Foods Market and started work on a small multi-species and pasture-based farm in the Pacific Northwest. After two years of working on the farm and managing the butcher shop, Brandon left and started Farmstead Meatsmith with his wife Lauren, who had journeyed with him from academia to agriculture.
00:01:05
Speaker
Today, the Sheards live in Northeastern Oklahoma with their nine children, teaching the art of animal harvesting and provisioning on the domestic scale. You can learn the craft of artful slaughter at farmsteadmeatsmith.com, where they host the Meatsmith memberships and post a full calendar of undiluted, hands-on classes in animal harvesting according to the traditions of the peasant home.
00:01:27
Speaker
We're excited to bring you this interview as a production of Little Way Farm and Homestead. If you're interested in helping this podcast grow and reach a larger audience, please consider leaving a review wherever you are listening.
Mission of Teaching Animal Harvesting
00:01:38
Speaker
And for more information about Little Way Farm and Homestead, or to contact us, please visit littlewayhomestead.com.
00:01:56
Speaker
Brandon and Lauren shared welcome to the little way farm at home said podcast. Thanks for having us. It's our pleasure. Yeah.
00:02:02
Speaker
Well, maybe just to kick us off, if you could provide just a bit of background about what you all do, a brief introduction to the anatomy of thrift or the farmstead meetsmith, how it started, the origins of it, and we'll go from there. Sure. Trip down memory lane. Yeah. Well, we're a Catholic family. We live in the Northeastern part of Oklahoma right now, but we own and operate farmstead meetsmith, and that is our
00:02:32
Speaker
Primarily, it's an educational class type offering where we raise animals on a domestic scale, and then we host people, we teach people who come from farm-wide to harvest animals on a domestic scale, utilizing the traditional methods of from slaughtering to butchering to curing and even cooking and even husbandry, the way that they're raised.
00:02:59
Speaker
And we've been doing that since 2010, I think is the official year that we put the start date on that. And it's definitely, we've definitely angled more towards the classes in the education, but really, we just have this
00:03:15
Speaker
domestic abundance when we raise animals and just very small, tiny, small scale farming. We have so much. The yield is always overwhelming. It's always made sense for it to overflow into classes, to teach people and invite them out to learn how to do it. And yeah, that's, that's kind of what we've been doing for a long time.
00:03:37
Speaker
In fact, I would say that, you know, it's, we're converts to the Catholic faith and our move to the land, to a more agrarian rooted lifestyle was actually simultaneous with our conversion. All of that kind of happened, 2008, 2009, 2010, around that, around that time.
Faith and Farming: A Seamless Blend
00:03:58
Speaker
What else should I say about that? Well, yeah, we became Catholic as we were kind of learning the natural law of eating well,
00:04:07
Speaker
We got married in 2008 and got pregnant right away with Wallace in 2009, we had him. And that process of having a child, learning how to eat well and keep ourselves healthy, not just with food, but with natural medicine, like the whole way of learning how to exist as a family, as healthy as we could, that brought us to the faith, oddly enough. We didn't talk about it as much early on.
00:04:37
Speaker
We just weren't there yet and we were learning so much. We thought it was enough just to talk about bacon and how to slaughter a pig well. And as we've grown in our faith, we just find that more interesting now. So we talked about the faith a little bit more now, but it all is still rooted in family life, good eating, good household management. I would say bacon is a good starting place too. Yeah. Who doesn't like bacon?
00:05:06
Speaker
Well, there's a lot really to unpack even in the beginning there.
Traditional Butchery Methods
00:05:09
Speaker
I'm interested in starting with that idea of traditional methods of butchery and what that looks like, even maybe considering, you know, Lauren, you mentioned the natural law and the ideas there that might have prompted a discussion or an interest in the Catholic faith as well. But when you say things like traditional methods of butchering and curing, what does that really refer to or what do you mean by that?
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question. So primarily, it's all on the domestic scale. So the traditions that we haven't really received, that haven't really been passed down, it takes some research to find them, to excavate them again. You're well on your way if you simply do it on a domestic scale. And by that, I mean you slaughter, you harvest what you can raise in your yard.
00:05:58
Speaker
So right there, you've just begun 90% of the content of what a traditional method would be just by extracting yourself and your consumption from the centralized production of that food. So just that alone, slaughtering a pig or any animal in your backyard with simple tools, seasonally,
00:06:20
Speaker
you will stumble in serendipitously into the traditional methods of your forebears. And so basically what it means is doing things on that small scale, order towards feeding the family. So not necessarily order towards mass production, right, and making the most. It's not order towards trade.
00:06:42
Speaker
It's ordered towards feeding humans that have immortal souls. So small scale, but then also the traditional methods, you could imagine them just remove all modern technology. And once again, you will trip into the traditional methods. So curing becomes not just a means of flavoring meat, but preserving it.
00:07:03
Speaker
And preserving means your bacon, your hams, the things that you cure never spoil in ambient household temperatures wherever you live. So you apply salt to the meat. After some amount of time, you rinse it off and then you hang it. And that meat keeps.
00:07:21
Speaker
until the apocalypse or you eat it, whichever comes first. So that's a total shift in the way we cure. And then I would say another element of traditional harvesting is 100% yield. There's no waste. It can all become food
Discovering God's Design in Food Practices
00:07:40
Speaker
for humans. That's the highest and best end of any backyard creature that we raise for food. And there's no part of them that you should throw away.
00:07:50
Speaker
You know, maybe you pick your battles and you and you choose certain things because ultimately you have you have higher goods that you need to aspire to and you subordinate the goods of the farm to that. But it's less wasteful, really. And then as far as the concrete traditions, you're excavating them because they vary from region to region throughout the world, all over Europe. It's all different. It's all climactically dependent.
00:08:15
Speaker
and geographically dependent and it's dependent upon the kind of seasons you have and the kind of yield that your ground can supply you with your earth and its fertility. So a lot of it is doing research around climates and regions that are similar to your own or trying to find some old neighbors that can teach you some cool old stuff.
00:08:41
Speaker
Just listening to how you're explaining all of this, it reminds me how, as we've learned about homesteading and raising our own foods, it's not only just discovering the ways of our ancestors and how they carried out life and feeding themselves, but in a lot of ways, it's shown me this beautiful, intricate design that God created in the way to nourish us. And it's almost like rediscovering his intentional purpose
00:09:11
Speaker
in feeding and nourishing us and I just I personally have really enjoyed breaking down all of what we're used to with the culture of food and centralized groceries and
00:09:25
Speaker
just finding God in the middle of all of that as well. So if you could start by taking us through this stewardship of husbandry, raising the animals and what that looks like and how you have found maybe not what people were used to now, but how people in the past have raised and properly stewarded the life of these animals.
00:09:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's been a learning experience for us. And it's really started just with docility to the natural order.
Aligning with Natural Order in Homesteading
00:10:01
Speaker
So we didn't know it at the time, but 10 years ago or more when we started on this journey, but there is a natural order. And like you say, it is intended by the creator.
00:10:16
Speaker
And so if we're in a state of grace, we're united to God in charity, then we love His works. We love His order and the way He has ordered the world and creatures and our cooperation with them. And so it's constantly been a
00:10:36
Speaker
like even at the beginning when we first met, we found that there were disordered things that were just taken for granted in relationships and when people come together and cutting off, short-circuiting their fertility and all of these things that we wouldn't have articulated at the time, but they violate the natural order, the divine intent that is inscribed
00:11:02
Speaker
in nature that we can actually perceive with our senses reliably. And I feel like all of modernity is marshaled against us to say, well, either there isn't an order, the primary substrate is total chaos, or there might be an order, but you do not have the ability to perceive it in truth. You can just see the phenomena, not the actual thing itself.
00:11:29
Speaker
And both of those things are totally false. St. Thomas says, all knowledge comes through the senses. So we can actually perceive it.
Homesteading and Family Balance
00:11:41
Speaker
And when your pig rebels against something on your farm and introduces disorder, you are accurately seeing disorder. You can go ahead and respond accordingly.
00:11:54
Speaker
And so a lot of it has been trying to be docile to the nature of each animal because we have, you find it whether you want to or not, there's this really benevolent effect of being in the country, being around livestock and animals is that strange little personal fantasies that aren't true about the way things are don't stand up very long. Like pigs don't tolerate.
00:12:23
Speaker
pig fantasies, you know, if you treat them a certain way, they're going to rebel against them. And so you actually have to discipline yourself to perceive their nature, their habit of being. And this goes for your grasses, you know, your pigs, your how does your corn behave seasonally? And you have to believe that you can actually perceive their nature and act in accordance with it. And
00:12:52
Speaker
I don't know, I feel like for us, it's been many years of doing that and then we get to supply the final cause to all of these things, to our little kingdom here. And the final cause, the final purpose, what does it all serve? And if we can have that first thing first, if we can have that rightly ordered
00:13:15
Speaker
then the means to get there become so much more intelligible and it removes so much conflict and ambiguity about how to attain that or what to do day to day because you have the final cause in view. I need to feed my children. What would you say about that? Yeah, the final cause is huge. And to go back to your original question about stewardship and to tie it in with what you were saying, I think it's
00:13:40
Speaker
Really important that we understand that we can't really steward well if we're not, like you said, in that state of grace because we're not going to see all the cues that nature gives us to tell us, okay, this is disordered over here. We need to order it. If your pigs are out of hand, you're going to do whatever you can to not have to fix that because that might take some work.
00:14:09
Speaker
Or maybe it's even like it could be on a small level. Like right now we have an unruly doc that's messing up our geese. And we're kind of just biting with it because they're going to be killed in two weeks anyway. So we're like, OK, it's not worth the upheaval of killing this doc right now. So that is one level of disorder. But then there's also the higher level of disorder that can happen within a family.
00:14:38
Speaker
if you are selling your soul for your homestead project because you're not seeing well enough to go, you know, I'm making this project more important than spending time with my kids or spending or listening to my husband maybe and his judgment or whatever. And all this comes back to being in that state of grace so that you can see properly and then have the strength of will to react accordingly
00:15:09
Speaker
And then have your appetites ordered so that you can deny yourself what needs to be denied in the moment. And all this comes back to seeing well so that you can steward well. And I'm saying so much all at once, but I think we've been doing this long enough to where we've seen families get really enthusiastic and excited about homesteading. And that's wonderful because it is the best way to live little by little incrementally as we all crawl out of modernity.
00:15:39
Speaker
But then they burn out because the darkness hits and then they don't know what to do because they're misprioritizing things. They're spending too much time with their pigs rather than their family or whatever the project is. We all want to get there, but we also have to keep our head above water and prioritize being in that state of grace
00:16:04
Speaker
Yeah, especially since the homesteading life in the modern era starts with having discipline over your appetites. Right. Because we're doing this crazy artificial thing.
Foundations of a Well-Functioning Homestead
00:16:14
Speaker
The easiest thing is to drive two, four minutes out the door and get your food at the grocery store. Yeah. That's the easy thing. We're going upstream. Yeah, right. And so it starts with a kind of temperance, you know, an ordering of the passion.
00:16:30
Speaker
you actually get your food the hard way and you don't just buy what you want. You prepare and consume what you can produce, what you can produce. But then at the same time, not getting too anxious and feverish to eat the purest thing while your household is falling apart because we've seen that, you know, we're like, we've done that. We've done that. We've been there. Yeah. And we haven't seen very well and it actually took,
00:17:00
Speaker
the traditional faith to really get us back in line, learning the moral teaching of St. Alphonso Sligori and Francis de Sales and obviously Thomas Aquinas and learning, oh, I have to get these things in order.
00:17:12
Speaker
And it took some good priests to really tell us to teach us what even being in a state of grace means. And, um, you know, going through the hard work of going through a rigorous examination of conscience. And it's not that point is not to be too scrupulous, but to like, just make sure I've got my priority straight with justice, temperance, prudence, and fortitude, and then charity, hope, and faith as well, making sure I'm
00:17:38
Speaker
And then the duties of state in life, you know, it's way more important that I'm teaching my children on a day to day basis and not pumping out
00:17:50
Speaker
five podcasts a week because that's my temptation is like, Oh, I just love homesitting. I want to talk about it all the time. But we ended up doing one every like couple of months, you know, that's just an example. Maybe my temptation is to make the perfect homemade laundry soap, which I have totally abandoned doing anymore. You know, I used to, I don't know.
00:18:13
Speaker
Well, you're hitting on something that I think we come across as we feel, as we look around, not only in the way that we started homesteading, but also is really a big concern of ours when we talk to people who are interested in homesteading, is that there are some barriers, firstly, in moving away from modern society and the idea, even the mindset of modernity towards homesteading from a Catholic perspective.
00:18:39
Speaker
But also in that much of it, it seems to be so hyper focused on everything outside of the home. And that becomes, I think, particularly troublesome because what you often see, especially as promoted through social media and becomes a little bit more viral and what
00:18:57
Speaker
you know the conferences typically seem to lean towards is all of the activities that happen outside which is important it's necessary it's integral to the home setting lifestyle but it's what happens i think inside the home which becomes often the second priority to many people and what really i think that kind of sums up is what does the home look like what is the order of the home is there a liturgical life within the home
00:19:22
Speaker
Does the home and the way that it functions follow a liturgical rhythm through the seasons, just like nature follows seasons? The church has a liturgical calendar. Does the home follow a similar mentality? When you're out maybe considering how people could begin to set up a foundation for where a homestead would actually thrive that's ordered properly, where maybe they could skip through some of the first years of struggling and reprioritizing and deprioritizing,
00:19:51
Speaker
where do you recommend people begin? Is it outside? Is it with the animals? Is it inside with a routine and a rhythm for the day? What does that look like? Yeah, so that is a great question. I think it's you start with the duties of your state in life. And you know what those are by
00:20:08
Speaker
examining what you have been sacramentalized in. So, you know, if you've been baptized and confirmed, especially if you have received the holy sacrament of marriage matrimony, there are thankfully really concrete
00:20:27
Speaker
actionable duties that go along with that. And the advantage to starting there is that you have supernatural aid, supernatural divine life to help you do those things. And if those are number one, it's, you know, it's just like what our Lord says, seek first the kingdom of God, and then all these things will be added unto you. And that those little
00:20:51
Speaker
those simple daily duties, they are the ones that actual holiness and order for your whole homestead is going to be built upon. And just like you said, it starts inside the home and then it will ripple to the outside. And you can see that in all of Catholic culture too. You can basically track the priorities
00:21:17
Speaker
of a society by the way that a medieval town was built, right? You've got the, everyone put all of their resources into the church, some of which took 650 years to build. And everything is centered around that altar, which is all ordered towards the presence of our Lord.
00:21:38
Speaker
on that altar in the Tabernacle. And then out from that, you get the immense church building, tallest building in the town, and then the town square, and the market, and then the homes, and then the fields. And everything is centered on the church. And you see that across all of Europe. And I feel like that we echo that same order in the home. And so, yeah, I think the best place to start is the duties of your state.
00:22:06
Speaker
And if you're, if you're married, it's, it's, it hopefully, you know, it's clear what those duties are to your spouse. Um, but even prior before that, like you need your duty to, to God to save your own soul and then the soul of your spouse and then your children. And if you're, which always involves, you know, being open to having as many children as God would give you and educating them. And, um,
00:22:35
Speaker
when you tie into those duties primarily, then the backyard pig will actually serve you as opposed to you serving it. Yes. Trying to fulfill some ideal of like domestic tranquility in a disordered way, because here's the thing.
Daily Bread and Family Purpose
00:22:54
Speaker
If you're starting with, you know, the backyard pig in terms of the prioritization of fulfilling your duties, then
00:23:04
Speaker
That amateur zeal that got you there in the first place of the quaint, beautiful homestead, ordered gardens, you know, and everything, lovely and productive and fertile, which is a good, your zeal for that is gonna wear out. It's going to burn out. And it's not going to last.
00:23:21
Speaker
And so you actually need more than just an emotional delight or delectation for that kind of thing. It actually has to come under the heading of justice and obedience to God to order your property, your land that way. And you can do that when it is part of a fulfillment of the duties of your state. And then you get supernatural grace to help you do that.
00:23:46
Speaker
Because I think we need grace even just to fulfill our natural duties. That's right. And it comes from that, that prioritization. I think you're right. Absolutely. You start with the present moment, your duties of state. And for me, that definitely means in the home, you know, I wake up every morning, I do my morning offering, whatever prayers I can eke out before I start getting smacked in the face with reality of eight children, you know,
00:24:17
Speaker
And that's usually where I end up is in the home at the beginning of the day, in the home at the end of the day. And once in a while I can like the stars align. And like right now, Carissa, you know, you're able to like venture out into the world for half a second with your husband, you know, and those are delightful moments and I love them, but they are very few and far between, you know,
00:24:44
Speaker
Going to Sunday Mass is a big deal. Or just going to a store to pick something up. Well, actually, now that my sons are older, I am venturing out more because we just went and bought a new musical instrument yesterday. So we got to go to this really neat boutique shop in Tulsa with just my 14-year-old and I. And that was just such a beautiful afternoon.
00:25:09
Speaker
I don't have that every day. So I go out in the world, do my duty, which is to help my son, you know, along in his studies and then come back, keep doing the humdrum.
00:25:18
Speaker
That's my life. For Brandon, his has to be a little bit more exterior. His has to be a little bit more visible, I would say, as the man, as the husband. And so that's where our roles do separate a little bit, because he's got to earn the daily bread. But ultimately, it is still for the home. It's not like you've got some grand mission to change the world.
00:25:43
Speaker
this does happen to be what's paying the bill so we're doing it right now but like we're ready to check it in a moment seriously if it stops earning our daily bread or yeah or if it if it supplants the greater good in any way that yeah yeah it's a great point doing
00:26:02
Speaker
the prioritization of that and what that looks like. Because in some ways, you know, the bringing in of income is almost a means to an end and the end should be the support and the development of the family society. And if it's not doing that or if it's
00:26:18
Speaker
You know, certainly this is not a commentary. There's very difficult situations in life and there's very nuanced situations in the modern economic life that we all still find ourselves a part of. But if it's ordered at least mentally in that way, I think it affords an opportunity to be more receptive to grace and at least understand why it is that you do what you do instead of, you know, just spending all of your time in prayer.
00:26:43
Speaker
Because ultimately, even though that seems to be a phenomenal good and more indicative of the beatific vision, we are here on earth. And we have things that we are called to do and vocations to live. And the way that we engage in external activities and support our households seems to be wrapped up in there somewhere. I don't know how to theologize it, but it's somewhere.
00:27:06
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's a great point. And to steal something else from Dr. Malash, he says that, you know, we are, like you say, our highest good is contemplation of God.
Work, Prayer, and Focus on God
00:27:18
Speaker
And we are all called to that. Like, that's not just for a special few, is to behold the face of God for all eternity. And we can actually partake in that a little bit now through contemplation. But the thing is, we're not just disembodied minds.
00:27:34
Speaker
We are hylomorphic. We have the powers of the soul, intellect and will, but we also, inextricably, indivisibly, you know, have bodies. And so supporting the good of the body in an ordered way, it's not even contrary to the contemplation. It's like, no, you're augmenting it.
00:27:57
Speaker
When it's ordered properly, you're supporting the body so that you can contemplate God, so that you can support the soul because it's essential just by our very nature.
00:28:09
Speaker
And you get to a point to in prayer and grace where you are, you are praying as you're working very benedictine kind of thought, but you know, you're doing your focus on your duties and then, Oh, I get to come up for air for a minute, you know, breathe out a little prayer to God and reunite yourself, reorient yourself and then go onto the next task. And it can, you know, reduce a lot of that feverish.
00:28:35
Speaker
Um, you know, like I got to produce kind of mentality and it keeps you united to God, even though, yes, I'm probably not going to be a Teresa of Avila in my prayer, you know, and that's okay. I'm not supposed to be. So I trust that. And I pray as I can, as I'm working, um, yeah, picking myself up when I fall.
00:28:58
Speaker
And then we do have some ordered as much as we can in a family of eight, you know, morning offerings and consecrating the day, plenty of those throughout the day. Yeah. I think our understanding of what ordered prayer time look like with young children around, especially went from a thought of how it ought to look to how it actually practically can look.
00:29:21
Speaker
Which has been very challenging to me, but it's also been very humbling and I'm pleased with what often it looks like. I've just learned to understand that there is a practical side and that's beautiful too because it is a part of our existence as humans. And somewhere in there is a distinction I'm sure about what God wants the family to look like, which is beautiful as well.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yes, but that may be an interesting point to to consider because a lot of people right now are beginning and you all encounter people I'm sure all the time who are not on the land or they're looking to join you get you know get to the land or they're beginning their home setting journey or they're early on in it.
Advice for New Homesteaders
00:30:07
Speaker
What do you think those early days or the early years, what can people hope or strive to accomplish maybe in that time as they establish their homestead, considering that potentially it's not just about their experience, but generations to come? Yeah, I think that I find that the the nitty gritty of actually homesteading the act of growing a lot of food, lots of vegetables, of raising livestock, that
00:30:34
Speaker
If that stuff is actually relatively simple, people can do that. That doesn't take too, I don't know, it doesn't take a prolonged, torturous, educational process. You can figure that out. Even just growing vegetables for a season or a year.
00:30:52
Speaker
you pretty quickly will learn everything you need to know about growing vegetables in that year. You've pretty much got it. And then it becomes a discipline from then on to do it well. So I always think, especially when you're looking at it, maybe you're living in the city and you're idealizing the growing of food production and living out in the country,
00:31:14
Speaker
It helps to know I think that all of the practical elements that are super intimidating or maybe exciting to you of, oh boy, I got to kill my own pig. I don't know about that. That is actually the easy stuff. It is simple. You can totally do that. All of those arts, raising your own food, harvesting your own livestock, that is the prowess of peasants. It's only recently that that has become isolated.
00:31:40
Speaker
in the centralized food production system and fragmented as a craft. But once you see the whole thing beginning to end, a year of vegetable growing, eight months of raising out a pig, it is very simple. And so those things will come quickly. And I think that the things that will take some time and might be unexpected is the discipline that's involved. And I always tell people,
00:32:06
Speaker
Killing a pig is easy. The challenge is disciplining yourself to eat all that you get from the pig. And it sounds silly because it's like, well, who wouldn't want to eat home reared pork? I get it's absolutely delicious. The fat is sweet and wonderful. It's not cloying and bitter. It's like a, not just a difference in degree, but in kind from any kind of pork or meat you can buy from the store. It is so delicious.
00:32:31
Speaker
But just by the raw fact that you're doing it at home, you're going to have way more meat than you know what to do with.
00:32:38
Speaker
and way more textures than you know how to handle in the kitchen. And so actually starting to regard food and eating as a discipline is huge. And otherwise you're gonna waste a ton of stuff and it's gonna be a burden when you do kill that pig. And you're like, I have a four pound liver, what the? And I have a head that weighs 15 pounds.
00:33:03
Speaker
And I have a prosciutto, you know, you cure it for, it hangs for two years and it's delicious, but you find it's actually really difficult to eat this thing. And it's because part of the commercial production of food has made it just basically pre-chubed, we're all eating baby food. It's all just one step removed from a feeding tube of smoothie,
Discipline of Eating Home-Reared Food
00:33:24
Speaker
just straight down our gullet, you know, as far as how much work it takes.
00:33:30
Speaker
And so you're gonna have to get used to the idea of working for your food and then working to consume it. So you're consuming not based on, oh, I wanna prepare this recipe tonight. You're not consuming it based on your likes and dislikes necessarily, but on what is right and ready and abundant at that moment. Eat that. And so part of the discipline of eating is not just that temperance,
00:33:55
Speaker
which of course is only going to be strengthened by fasting. That's like step one, learn how to fast. But you gotta learn how to cook and treat cooking as a serious discipline, as a virtue. And fortunately, it's easy, it's simple, it's not complicated. Because the quality of our ingredients are so poor from the grocery store, cooking has become complicated. But when you're starting with home-root ingredients that are already delicious,
00:34:22
Speaker
it's a much simpler process. And so I tell people that I'd rather have a skilled home cook.
00:34:29
Speaker
Butcher my pig than a seasoned conventional butcher. That's right. Because she knows the final cause, which is the family table and how to prepare it. And so I think, you know, step one before jumping out there into onto your land or homesteading is gain the discipline of eating. Eat as a discipline, which involves fasting and temperance and learn how to cook it.
00:34:53
Speaker
temperance, not just in withholding yourself from eating, but doing justice, I guess, to the food that's in front of you and taking the time to treat it well. What's that line from the famous chef? Take care of your vegetables or they will? Oh, yeah. Yeah. What is it? If you, um,
00:35:15
Speaker
It's something like if you try to control your ingredients too much, they won't misbehave. They will misbehave. Which is so true, especially when you're starting with good ingredients. Yeah, or like if you're afraid of them, they will know and misbehave. That's what it is. And so especially as the housewife, I've really had to like shift my mind and just grab the bull by the horns and okay, I have 20 pounds of
00:35:40
Speaker
bones in front of me. What am I going to do with this? And then, okay, here's a big stock pot. I'm going to deal with this in the right way. Or I've got a leg that wasn't turned into a ham, but okay, so what am I going to do with this? And I have to learn a little bit. Temperance involves not just eating the thing that's easy and pleasurable right away, but I'm going to use what's in front of me.
00:36:06
Speaker
Yeah, get excited about acquiring tastes, which are really the only ones worth having because you can, you have absolute mastery over your own food preferences. It's not the other way around. You can choose what to like or not like, literally by developing the habit of eating that thing.
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah, we talked a lot about, that was one of the, probably one of the sharpest differences between the way that we were living in the city versus when we moved to the country. And Carissa did a lot of work to kind of help us develop that discipline of eating and learning to eat whole animal products, beginning with larger cuts. And I think it started with whole chicken, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:36:50
Speaker
But even simply understanding how do you take a full animal and how do you use that full animal in your cooking? And that's a challenge I think for a lot of people because otherwise what ends up happening is they harvest an animal and they turn it into grocery store-esque cuts. And then they find there aren't as many grocery store-esque cuts on this one animal. There's a lot of other
00:37:18
Speaker
meet availability on this animal, but there's not a lot. There's not as many truck rows as I would typically go to the store to buy. It just doesn't exist on the same animal. Yeah, we've had the experience of customers saying, where's my spare ribs? It's like they're in there. You only get about a pound and a half of them per side of pork. They just couldn't believe it. That's all they come with.
00:37:44
Speaker
What is that maybe like when you all first started, I think you mentioned 2010 timeline, was that a journey in learning how to use that full animal or was that something that you all either maybe through growing up or other training had already acquired?
00:38:00
Speaker
Yeah. So we have zero training. We have negative training. We had to unschool ourselves first. Yeah, we did. Yeah. So both totally just grown up in suburbia, you know, totally divorced from any food production of any kind.
Learning Cooking and Butchery
00:38:17
Speaker
And it was the path really started with the culinary element was learning how to cook. I worked on a farm.
00:38:26
Speaker
And, but I was more on the retail end of that farm. I was running the farmer's markets. We were bringing fresh, not frozen, but fresh meat to the farmer's markets.
00:38:36
Speaker
And we were slaughtering all the animals ourselves, which means we, just like you say, we had everything, not just the geometric grocery store cuts. And on a small scale farm production like that, it is suicide to throw away 60% of the animal, which is what you do if you're only going for those grocery store style cuts. There's so much more there. So I had to teach our customers at the farmer's market how to cook those things, which means I had to learn how to cook them.
00:39:06
Speaker
And that was the beginning for me. And it was learning how to braise, pan fry, and roast, and then communicating that to customers, which fortunately, those are the only three recipes for all meat cooker. You just got to learn how to braise, pan fry, and roast. You don't need 101 recipes for meat cooking, just three. And there's no part of any carcass that you can't make delicious if you know how to braise, pan fry, and roast. No part. Your feet, tails, ears, all of it.
00:39:33
Speaker
you got it covered. And when I would teach customers this, they would buy what they are unaccustomed to, very expensive, fresh meat from the farmer's market with high price tag. And they would go home and they prepare it that way. And they come back the next week and say, that's the best thing I ever tasted. It's like, I know, it's quality, it's quality meat. It was husband and well, it's harvested well, and you cooked it simply. And so that was really my starting point is I learned to cook it
00:40:04
Speaker
And then because that is the final cause of livestock is the family kitchen and cooking it well. And so it was easy to work backwards from that, not easy. It just took, you know, a little discipline and no formal education to work backwards from that to not just how to kill the animal, but even how to raise it.
00:40:28
Speaker
because then you start to learn about flavor and how beef or pork or lamb can taste and it is nothing like what you can purchase.
00:40:39
Speaker
It's not even on the same plane. And so when you know what it can taste like and you know how to cook it, then you become the authority on how it ought to be harvested and grown because you have the final cause and view. There is no other standard. You can totally reject the poster on the butcher shop wall with like those cylindrical denuded geometric shapes. They come from, it's silliness, it's ridiculous.
00:41:05
Speaker
If you can harvest that pig or cow or whatever it is, and then you prepare its meat and you can't even quite remember what that cut was called, but it's delicious, then you butchered properly. You did it all properly because that is the final cause.
00:41:22
Speaker
So that was my beginning. It really was cooking and getting used to the idea that cooking is gonna be a substantial part of our life and of our day, day to day. We're going to be cooking a lot. It's just the continued husbandry, the continued husbandry of that animal, the continued harvest of it.
Central Role of Cooking in Homesteading
00:41:42
Speaker
It's not just, I don't know, a final step that should take up a minimal part of the day. We spend a lot of time cooking.
00:41:50
Speaker
Do you find that much of the conversation that we have around homesteading and starting and learning and I love the phrasing unschooling and unlearning some of it too, do you think it is more so about these first generation of people who are adults effectively or the older children who are having to go through that more difficult process and the children who are coming through the homesteading lifestyle that it's really not as impactful to them because it's what they
Children's Role in Homesteading Tasks
00:42:16
Speaker
know?
00:42:16
Speaker
because that's been our experience thus far. And our children help us with butchering. And I think people come over and they see them do that and they're shocked. Like, does that not bother them? Are they not? Like, are they okay with that? One of our oldest daughters, she's just, she is the chicken foot cutter off her. I don't know why that's just her thing. She loves it. It's a fun task. I think she can accomplish it easily too. So she gets a sense of satisfaction, but she's always like, I want to do the chicken feet.
00:42:45
Speaker
And all our children are around us and they seem to, I even hesitate to say they seem not to be phased because it seems to imply that they would be phased, but they're not. And they seem totally, not just fine with it, but they seem strengthened by the fact that they are a part of the harvesting process. Is that a similar experience that you all have? Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. I mean, they definitely have to learn to be repelled by an animal harvest. That's taught.
00:43:15
Speaker
And I remember our first three children born are boys. And so boys, you know, they're just born with guns and sticks and spears and swords in their brain. That's just how they enter the world. And so there was no, not a moment of hesitation at the harvesting of animals. And especially since they're exposed to it so young, it's like, you know,
00:43:41
Speaker
Mom and dad put us to bed at night and they kill pigs in the day. Those are the things that happen. I remember my son Wallace, when he was little, he would just get gleeful, three or four when he'd kill a pig because he would feel the energy. It is a big thing. It's deep breath.
00:44:01
Speaker
We're about to start a lot of work. You know, we have to endeavor to receive everything this pig is going to give us, which is lots of preparation in the household, getting ready to do this slaughter. So he feels all of that. And I remember he was like jubilant right after I shot this one pig. He was like four years old.
00:44:19
Speaker
And in typical boy fashion, he was, I took the shot. It took a while to get a perfect target set up and waiting. And you know, I'm very conscientious. I want the shot to be perfect. You know, I don't want to have to shoot the pig multiple times. That's always a disaster. And so this is like my brand. Like I'm the guy that kills pigs humanely. That's how I do.
00:44:41
Speaker
And we had pupil over, and I shot this pig and my son immediately. He was like three or four? Four? I think he was two. Wow. Yeah, two. He was speaking pretty well at two. He was like, hey, pig, you glad you're dead? And I'm like, wow. Whose child is this?
00:45:01
Speaker
But it was great. Okay, yeah, he was three or four on that one. I thought you were going to say the other one. Oh, yeah. When he was two. On my back. Yeah. Ergo. When he was little, little. Like, teeny tiny, his vocab was much smaller. And he goes, he was a shot. The shot happened. Bang. And you just hear Wallace going, ow. Well, before that he was sick. Well, hang on. He goes, ow. Go, go, go. Yeah.
00:45:27
Speaker
Because right after you shoot the pig, you want to stick it quickly. Yes. Because you want to get the proper bleed out, exsanguination of the pig. He can feel that like, ow, go, go. It's time to stick it. So anyway, all of that to say they do get it. And now Wallace is 14 and he's got a steer head with almost six foot spread tip to tip on the horns sitting in my shop right now bleeding on the floor.
00:45:54
Speaker
Because he's going to... From five days ago. He's going to turn it into a mount. He's going to boil it. He's going to pull the horns off, clean the skull. It's going to be beautiful. He's already done it once. So this is the second time around. He knows what he's doing. Yeah. But yes, they definitely gain the habit. They process it in a different way. Another son of ours, Simon, when he was little, he was starting to pick up on how Brandon killed turkeys.
00:46:22
Speaker
poultry. Should I share this one? Yeah, it's great. And he goes, daddy, when you kill a turkey, this is what you do. It's okay. It's okay. Again with the sword. He understands like calm, serene, and quick before the slaughter and then make the kill quick. Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:49
Speaker
that's uh we it's i'm happy to hear that because it's been our similar experience sometimes with our children we're like hey maybe we should tone it down a little bit like you're getting a little bit too excited about it or especially when they um will share with other people like their grandparents hey guess what we're doing and
00:47:07
Speaker
And sometimes it's like, I'm so happy that you all understand and appreciate and frankly that I think as they get older, they'll understand like the weight of it and like the applications of it and what's really going on. But that they're excited about being welcomed into this mystery of life in that way. And it's very encouraging and exciting. Yes. Yeah. They know the fruit of it, which is banqueting and feasting and abundance.
00:47:33
Speaker
And they see the beauty of that in the, at the dining table and it's all connected. But yeah, like you said, like, it's actually not for me to make the death connection for them. They will get it naturally and they have their own moment of meditating on it, you know? And they, so I don't have to worry about that. Yeah. I would say it's even appropriate for them to be sad. Sure. You know, when they, some of, some of our children have been sad at a particular animal. And it's like, yeah.
00:48:03
Speaker
will be an ordered response. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So on the grander scale, Wallace is 14 now, not to belabor this point, but we just killed this mammoth longhorn, which is a huge story in itself.
Connecting Homesteading with Literature
00:48:19
Speaker
And you had to you had to drag it on the ground from the kill pen to the underneath our slaughter area. Anyway, Wallace has just read the Iliad.
00:48:33
Speaker
And I don't know if it was me or him, but I was like, Wallace, what does that remind you of? And it was like, for me, it was dragging Hector's body, his big, glorious hero of a beast, you know, which is what the longhorn was. And that's, anyway, it was fresh in our minds, but it was like, we're just watching. It was just so majestic and it was dead and it was slightly worth grieving over, you know.
00:49:03
Speaker
before the harvest. Yeah, it's wonderful.
00:49:06
Speaker
Well, I know we've got some children who are now running all around us and I think we're close at the time here. So I just want to say thank you immensely for joining us again. This was wonderful. And I really appreciate you being here and thank you for the work that you do. If you want to give a plug for how people can find you and yeah, you can find us at farmsteadmeetsmith.com. And we have lots of classes up right now. In fact, we have some spaces in the family pig class, which is a three day extensive harvest.
00:49:36
Speaker
totally hands on, small group, people go home knowing how to do it on their own. That's the idea with simple kit. And that's we've got dates for that in November and December. And then we're even going to do a really cool class down in Louisiana on how to do homestead scale duck harvesting and raising and actually produce your own foie gras, which is
00:50:00
Speaker
only a terrible practice insofar as it is commercialized and industrialized. They used to be the housewife backyard source of fat, poultry fat. And so all of that will be covered down in Louisiana with another great Catholic family, the backwater foie gras. So
00:50:19
Speaker
lots of things going on on the website, particularly with classes. And we've got our online membership, the Meatsmith membership that you can find on the website as well with an archive of over 50 videos detailing all of this, all the processes.
00:50:33
Speaker
We're on Instagram as well. Um, if you're on social media, Instagram is the best place to find us there. And then our own YouTube page, which, um, hosts our podcast. Like I said, we don't get one out very regularly, but when we can, we sit down and try to chat like this. So that's great. Well, thank you both for being here and we look forward to talking in the future. All right. Thank you. Thank you.
00:51:00
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on another episode of the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast. Check out the show notes for more information about this episode and be sure to tune in next week.