When I first met Mark and Jill Baker, I wanted to do something to help them, and to get their story out there.
We decided together that they would come to Massachusetts and lead a “You can Farm” class in my home. They would come and teach people how to butcher a whole pig, and how to cook/cure every single part of the pig so that none of it went to waste. This two-day class was well worth the hundred dollars we were charging.
I advertised the class on my Facebook Farmageddon page and to my buying club, and the perfect number of 20 participants signed up. The Bakers slaughtered three pigs at their farm in Michigan, froze them, and traveled across the country with them and two of their children to stay at my house for a few days.
At 8am on a bright, but frigid, Saturday morning, we supplied coffee, tea, raw milk and bone broth to the 20 people who eagerly showed up in 20 degree weather, to learn how to properly butcher the barely thawed pigs, in my garage. Class members ranged from a variety of farmers, to chefs, to BBQ restaurant owners, caterers, and people like me, who had no idea what they were doing.
We learned how to cut up the individual parts of the pigs, and then cooked every piece of the pig. We made sausages, pate, and soups. We learned to cure bacon and prosciutto. We made head cheese and we rendered lard. We used the bones for bone broth (and fed some extra bones to our happy dogs). I found pigs jaws around my yard for a few months after that.
The food we made was truly delicious. The freshness of the food really stood out I don’t think that many of us had ever eaten meat that fresh. Something about preparing it all ourselves and putting all of that work into it made it especially tasty also.
How is it that there are not too many of us who know how to supply our own food? Why are we afraid? As I have stated before, we have all gotten very used to system of corporate entitities supplying our food. We depend on this system to provide the perfect cuts of meat for us. We readily eat pork chops, bacon, prosciuoto, tenderloin, roast, ribs, pulled pork, with no real idea where the meat actually came from, how it was raised and how it was butchured and prepared for sale.
Mark stated during the class that we have been brainwashed to be afraid to prepare our own food. That’s why he and his wife are on a mission to teach people that WE CAN DO THIS! Factory farming and the mass production of food has presented a lot of safety problems, which have filtered down and caused the food safety specialists to crack down on the small farmers and artisan food makers. It has gotten to the point where many of us are afraid to cure and ferment foods in our own kitchens.
Please watch the excerpts of Mark and Jill’s class below.
Mark just completed a hearing yesterday in which the Michigan Department of Natural Resources reversed their ruling from two and a half years ago and declared that Mark’s pigs are, in fact, legal. Unfortunately, that still leaves Mark in a position of uncertainty about his legal status for the future, the actual restrictions still in effect for family farmers raising pigs, and the devastating financial losses he has incurred over these past two years. He is reviewing his options for how to proceed — but still needs your help and support. Please contribute at this link:
TO HELP SUPPORT MARK AND JILL’S FIGHT Go to: https://pledgie.com/campaigns/20620.html
