It's been sweet, Chirrichin

Many people here raise a lot of their own food, whether it be vegetables or livestock.  Chelo and Gonzalo have a chicken coop and 2 pigs.  Today they butchered one of the pigs, Chirrichin.  They have had Chirrichin since May and at his time of death he weighed about 220lbs.  They fed him daily with food scraps from their meals and gourds that they grew in their backyard.  They hired a local man to come and kill the pig, which was done with a cattle gun to the forehead.  Jonathan went down to view this.  I stayed up at the house with Chelo, and then the two of us went down to the barn after it was dead.  Jonathan posted a video of the killing on his blog, if you're interested. 

Here's Gonzalo with the cattle gun.  He's excited - he absolutely loves it when Jonathan and I are excited about something that he does in his every day life.

Here's Gonzalo and the killer-for-hire, right after the pig died.

So then they dragged the pig outside and hosed it down:

And then they blow-torched it to burn all of it's hair off.

 We then brought him up onto a bench, which Gonzalo has made specifically for disartculating animals. 

He was then scrubbed down and rinsed off again, to remove the crust and burnt hair from the torching.

They then cut down the belly of him and spread his legs, as seen below.  The butcher also made a joke to Jonathan and I about showing us how they do it in Spain, as he promptly cut down the belly of the pig and removed it's penis.

And then they took all of the guts out.  Everything else they kept.  Chelo has a big hunk of her last pig on her kitchen counter and she hacks of slabs of the fat to oil pans when she cooks (amazing). 

Here's the butcher giving me a tour of the cardio-pulmonary system, which also had the tongue attached to it (notice Gonzalo in the background excited about our excitement).

And then we rinsed out the insides:

 Lastly we hung the pig up overnight.

This was an absolutely awesome experience.  It made me miss my dad, who would have loved this.  Tomorrow we will return to butcher the pig, to cut up all of the meat into delicious hunks.  We are going to head over to Chelo and Gonzalo's after breakfast for the butchering and then we will all have a big lunch together.  I made a cake to bring over, to commemorate the special day. :)