August Community Pig Buy
I call it The Pig Divide. Basically, we all get together as a group and buy a pig, a wholesome locally sourced pig that is better quality, better flavor and better treated than anything we could buy at the grocery store, and at a better price. Then, we divide it up into 10 and 15 lb shares.
This time around we are getting our wine from Tru Grass Farms, run by Guido, one of our local hero farmers who is a leader in restoring land through rotational grazing.
August Pig Butchery Classes
In this three and a half hour class, I lead a group of students to butcher a whole locally-sourced, pasture-raised pig together in community. Participants will gain hands-on experience in butchering, learn about the different parts and cuts of the animal and how to best cook them. We will discuss how to utilize the whole animal and gain multiple functions out of the pig’s different parts. And, when we are done, we will divide it up into shares to take home.
Most people participate in both the pig buy and the pig butchery class, but it is possible to only participate in one or the other:
The Details:
We are organizing two pork share and butchery workshops:
Sunday 8/9 from noon to 3:30ish
Saturday 8/15 from noon to 3:30ish
Both in South Berkeley.
The pig will be from True Grass Farms, located in Valley Ford in the coastal valleys of Marin County. True Grass’s pigs spent their entire life on pasture, where they roam around and forage for food. Their feed is supplemented by a diet of whey, sprouted barley, yogurt,and bread. True Grass raises Large Black and Tamworth cross breeds — heritage breeds that are known for their ability to forage, and of course produce delicious, flavorful, well-marbled meat.
In this hands-on workshop, you will learn to butcher a whole pig with local chef Seth Peterson, and take home delicious, pasture-raised pork. The workshop will cover everything from how to source your own sustainably-raised animal, to knife skills and approprite cooking techniques, and of course, how to butcher a whole hog and stock your fridge with a meat share of assorted cuts, from chops to pork belly and roasts.The butchery workshop will take place on Sunday, August 9th, and Saturday August 15th, from noon to around 4 PM in South Berkeley (near Ashby Bart). The meat shares are either 10 lb. or 15 lb. portions for $50 and $75, respectively. The butchery workshop fee is $50-$100 sliding scale (explained below).
If interested, please email us at sylvia.eastbaybulkbuy@gmail.com.
A note about the sliding scale structure for our workshops:
We designed the sliding scale structure to make the class affordable to more people, with the hope that we come out with a reasonable sum to reward Seth for his expertise, time, labor and costs. In addition, a small portion of the proceeds will also go to the monthly fee and labor and time for me to maintain (and revitalize) the Bay Area Meat CSA listserv. Because it is an honor system, I strongly urge you to be as generous as you can to honor those of us who put work into making this event happen. As a guideline, I’d say that the bottom-end of the scale is for folks who have little to no budget for dining out regularly; the top end of the scale is for those who regularly spend more than $40 when dining out. If both extremes describe you (or if neither describes you), please pay somewhere in the middle.
***
Who We Are:
The Bay Area Meat CSA is an online network site for Bay Area residents to cooperate and buy meat and whole animals directly from local ranchers. Our aim is to connect our community to the very best of our local food producers and make it easier for you to eat really, really well. Our goal is to not only re-skill ourselves & our communities but, also, to help rebuild our local food shed by increasing urban access to healthy regenerative local agriculture.
Permaculture Chef Seth Peterson’s passions are teaching, cooking, and permaculture. Since returning to the Bay Area eight years ago, Seth has dedicated himself to cooking in top East Bay restaurants as well as exploring the local foodshed from Fort Bragg to Santa Cruz. It is Seth’s mission to share his love of cooking and permaculture by bringing real food to real people, reconnecting them to their local foodshed and giving them the knowledge and the skills to prepare good food using traditional cooking techniques that are both healthy and delicious. Learn more about Seth and sign up for his mailing list here.
True Grass Farms is committed to maintaining healthy pastureland by embracing a process of rotational grazing that depends upon the stewardship of a natural ecosystem—of which we as well as the grass are only two elements. True Grass raises Black Angus cows and California Kobe, a Japanese breed, renowned for their flavor and tenderness, along with pigs, rabbits, lambs, and chickens.True Grass strives toward a more harmonious relationship with our environment so as to provide the best local source of fine beef, pork and other pasture-raised USDA-certified organic meats to our community. Learn more about True Grass and where to source their excellent products here.
A LOCAL LARDER CATERING & EAT WELL URBAN COOKING SCHOOL 