Pigs

We had butchered one of our first pigs for the Christmas Party we gave for the guys who work the fish pen. Everyone enjoyed the different dishes that was prepared. We ate our meal under the net canopy by the beach.

For our second pig, we looked for someone to buy him live. We were unable to find a buyer for a live pig so we decided to butcher the pig and sell it ourselves. On 01/15/16 Flor and Abet went around barangays Pondol and Canipaan to pre-sell the pork. On 01/16/16 the pig was butchered in the backyard and packaged in 1 kilo (about 2 pounds) bag with the feet, head and internal organs separated. The guys who butchered the pig get the head and what was cooked at the time of butchering.

Flor was doing book keeping duty. Keeping track of who bought, who has received and who has paid for their pork. One person paid for his pork with rice. This is okay with us since we eat a lot of rice. From buying of the piglets, feed and medicine to the the butchering and selling of the pig we profitted about 4000 pesos (about 100 dollars). Does not sound like a lot, but here that is a lot of money.

As with the fish pen during harvest, butchering a pig in the backyard is a social event. Kids playing, people conversing and coming and going and of course the pork and rice being eaten with beer and cola afterwards.

Of course there is cleanup after all these activities.

My job in this ordeal was the daily care, cleaning and feeding of the pigs, learned a few things so we can make the next set of pigs more profitable. I am in the process of building a pig pen on the farm. We have a female and male pig left. We plan on selling or butchering the male. When the female is ready we will have her inseminated. When ready, we will sell the piglets for 2000 pesos (about 40 dollars) each. Whatever is left, we will raise them and once they get above 20 kilos (about 10 pounds) we will sell them for weight. There are a couple of hog buyers that go around town, load the pigs and take them to larger cities. We plan to keep one pig to butcher and sell ourselves when it hits about 80 kilos (about 160 pounds). We should have moved to our new place by then so I think this will be a good excuse for our neighbors to get together every four months.