A few weeks ago I traveled to Tivoli, New York to photograph and participate in a hog butchering workshop presented by The Greenhorns.  The workshop was presided over by Bryan Mayer, a butcher with The Greene Grape in Brooklyn New York.

I didn’t know a whole lot about butchering before this workshop.  I still don’t.  Trying to take good photographs of the event led me to miss most of what was said about certain cuts.  I know where the bacon comes from as well as the chops, roasts and ribs, but I am still a little fuzzy on the tenderloin and the various cuts from the shoulder.

There was a lot of reverence for the pigs during the butchering sessions.  We discussed their habits, their escapes from the farm, their food choices.  We also discussed how they were not named, a tradition that I do not adhere to.  I was very close to my pigs and couldn’t conceive that they would go through life without someone calling their names.  They didn’t get to pick their names, but how many of us had that opportunity? But they also didn’t choose to come live with us and eventually to die unnaturally either.  I will get into that in a future post.  For now I will let these pictures tell the story of the first day of butchering…