Yesterday we butchered two pigs at home. It was brilliant

[HumphreyCobbler]

We made sausages and salami. We had chops, tenderloin, ham, hocks,roasting joints - absolutely vast amounts of meat. We won't have to buy meat for at least six months.

We cure the bacon later and finish packing the sausages. The salami looks brilliant hanging in the shed.

I am so pleased

We do it all again on Sunday, two more pigs are being slaughtered and we butcher them on Friday.

I feel Hugh FW would be very proud

Willie, I'm not anthropomorphising. Let's not pretend it's all ok and that the ewe's don't realise that their young have gone, eh?

Peggotty, sorry, which question?

hmm. i am a vegetarian, but brought up on a small holding and have seen turkeys chickens and pigs slaughtered. 'it was brilliant' was a provocative term imo, in the title.

Can I come around for one too please HC?

DH and I are most impressed (we dream of a HFW life when the dcs have left home).

There's no point flouncing off, pegotty. Of course this subject was going to result in a heated discussion, especially with a subject title like that. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the vegetable steamer!

You're talking a lot of sense boojab

Thank you, commonsense :)

It's amazing how many meat-eaters just get in a huff and walk away without discussing the facts properly. Meat-eating is cruel to animals, bad for human health and devastating to the environment. It's just plain wrong!

Suze: hard day, few glasses of wine = flounce.

But my first ever after several years on mumsnet, so thanks for popping my flounce-cherry

You might not believe it, but I was vegetarian for 6 years.

Kiss Prudence, butterfly! No, I don't expect everyone to go veggie. In the same way that this thread isn't going to make everyone want to kill pigs and eat them.

Peggotty, come back to us. You know it makes sense .

God it was not provocative. It was a description of something I was proud of.

Butchery is the term you use to describe what we did. It happens all over the country in shops and factories, every day.

If you find that provocative then I find your sensibilities over done. If you are a vegetarian then don't click on food threads about meat.

Most of the people on here responded to me in the spirit I wrote it in.

I do feel if you want to discuss the ethics of meat eating you should all bugger off to your own thread.

Believe it or not, I have NEVER tried to be provocative on here. I am always polite and mostly non-confrontational. I thought I could share my enthusiasm with people on here.

For crap's sake Booja, I asked you a question at 21.24, if you can't be arsed scrolling back, fair enough! Dear me you are totally entrenched in your views aren't you?

I was a vegetarian once too.

Butterfly it's easy to obtain iron and magnesium from plant sources (vitamin D from sunshine, of course). Very, very easy in fact!

Good to know that farmed sheep are 'in-bred and thick'.........

Unfortunately those posters who are critising HC for producing meat that she eats in an ethical and sustainable way are really barking up the wrong tree. If you object to the killing and mistreatment of animals then there are much bigger fish to fry elsewhere, so to speak.

I produce my own honey and eggs, which are foods which I imagine that some vegetarians consume. I wouldn't say that either of those were produced without a degree of "manipulation" by me, which could be seen to be cruel. Whether that's killing drone brood or preventing chickens from continuing to be broody.

I also wonder if any of the posters have animals, perhaps cats or dogs, who would, normally be fed a meat diet. I'm not sure my cats would take to tofu.

Me too, Butterfly: "I want to see the zoom she said, I want to see the zoo!".

Peggotty, your question about what would happen to all the species? Well, they'd diminish of course. What do you think would happen? Do you think the cows would take over the earth?

I'm a pescatarian - I stopped eating meat in my early teens because of what I'd learnt about intensive farming.

(& yes, I should give up fish - it seemed an intellectually & morally consistent position to eat fish but not meat back in the '80s).

Slaughtering & butchering kindly-reared pigs at home? Brilliant. Wish we had the garden for it.

Missbeehaving, it is the 'thrill of the kill' that is confusing me in all this. I already stated that I accepted the pigs had a less awful death than they could have done.

come over

you are very welcome