The story begins when we ask our friends over at Savannah River Farms if they could catch us a wild pig. They agreed and brought us a small (freshly shot, dead) wild pig early in the week which turned out to be a good warm up for the main event later in the week. Knowing we were going to have a big crowd we went over to their farm Thursday to get a 120 lb pig (if you don't know pigs, a 120lb pig is pretty big and extremely strong.) I don't want to throw anyone under the bus here but Arianne thought it would be a good idea to tie the pig up and bring it back to the farm rather than just shoot it there so that we could all have the experience together. I think this is the sort of thing you think when it is not you who is wrestling and tying up an enraged pig. So anyhow, Charlie and I managed to wrassle this pig, tie him up, and put him in the truck. We rode back to the farm and without much delay, dispatched the pig and got to processing.
Typically when you process a pig at home you have a large vat of boiling water to dip the pig in so you can get the hair - we have no such vat - so we resorted to pouring boiling water on the pig to loosen the hair. Here are our good-natured WWOOFers doing this job:
Eventually we got most of the hair off. It turns out we needn't have been so thorough as accidentally setting the pig aflame in the roasting pit took care of the pesky hair remaining. Next came eviscerating the pig and removing his head which was just as gross as it sounds. Lastly we put him on ice.
We were so busy on the day of the hunt we didn't take any pictures of the pig roasting but here is a picture of Maggie digging our pit:
To roast the pig we followed instructions found here. They worked. Our only addition to these instructions would be to cook a wild pig lower/slower if possible. They have less fat and can dry out/toughen up easily.
Then we hoisted the cooked carcass on a table and let folks get to picking.
-Elliott
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