Rock Bottom Ranch in Basalt, Colo., is offering a series of hands-on classes focused on the slaughter and butchering of farm animals. by Alex Parker
JANET URQUHART, The Aspen Times
BASALT, Colo. - It's one thing to grow a few backyard tomatoes. It's another to raise a pig and serve it up as ham on the dinner table.
For one thing, most people don't call their tomatoes by name.
But as the local food movement gathers steam and municipalities around the Roaring Fork Valley ponder the ramifications of letting residents raise chickens in an urban environment, Rock Bottom Ranch in Basalt is offering a series of hands-on classes focused on the slaughter and butchering of farm animals.
They are the first such workshops for the educational ranch, an adjunct to the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, said Amy Hutton, livestock and wild lands manager at Rock Bottom.
"This is one of the most important things about local food production — being able to source meat from right next door," said Hutton, who slaughtered and ate her first rabbit recently as a precursor to the Pasture to Plate butchering series.
Rock Bottom Ranch raises a variety of livestock, some of which is butchered. Chickens are slaughtered and processed at a USDA-approved facility in Delta so that they can be sold (the sale of meat without the USDA stamp is illegal). But with no slaughterhouse particularly close to the Roaring Fork Valley, area residents who'd like to raise their own livestock for consumption might find it simpler to handle the task themselves.
The series at Rock Bottom Ranch will be taught by Emma resident Derek Miller, who raises goats, rabbits and chickens for his own use and has been processing animals — including livestock and wild game — since he was a youngster.
Killing an animal is definitely the hardest part, said Miller, who will show participants in the classes how he uses a short-range rifle to slaughter an animal quickly.
"It's not a fun thing," Miller said. "I've been hunting for a long time, so standing behind the back of a gun and pulling the trigger isn't that hard for me."
Slaughtering livestock gives one an appreciation and additional measure of respect for the meal that results, added Miller, who prefers to know how the meat he puts on his table was raised, fed and processed.
"If you're eating an animal and you actually know its name, the kids don't seem to leave much on the plate," he said.
The butchering series begins with the slaughter of a cow, which will be split and hung to age, according to Hutton. Slaughtering and processing a chicken also is on the agenda.
On Dec. 10, the slaughter, splitting and hanging of a goat and a pig are scheduled, plus the butchering of the cow.
On Dec. 17, butchering a goat and pig is planned, plus smoking meat and making sausage from the cow.
"Students can decide how much they want to be involved," Hutton said. "They can stand back or get in there and get messy."
Tagged: sustainability, agriculture, farming
Comments
Unreal 1 year, 5 months ago
This article is very disturbing, right along with the idea of taking classes to learn how to murder an animal. These animals are not pieces of furniture.....they are living beings who have a sense of family, care deeply for their young, feel fear, terror and pain just like we do. Besides, the last thing we need is people murdering, stringing up and slicing the necks and bleeding out these animals in their backyards. There would be no one to oversee that any of this slaughtering would be done correctly and humanely. This is an awful idea if I've ever read one. We should be teaching our children to eat a compassionate diet free of killing, and to eat lower on the food chain. Not how to kill, bleed out, skin and dismember a cow in their backyard.
orbiter 1 year, 5 months ago
So, you would rather children just be ignorant of the process? You sound like you have never been on a farm. Farmers do understand animals "are not pieces of furniture". Just so condescending when people like you, with good intentions I'm sure, act as though farmers are dumb murders, like half-wit Leatherface characters walking around in a blood-lust. I am a vegetarian, but also understand humans have evolved to eat meat, hunt and herd animals. Would you walk into a Native American gathering where they are slaughtering animals and spew this vitriol? I know you mean well, but not everyone is as enlightened as you as to turn away from millions of years of evolution. Being ignorant of the process of getting meat on a table leads to the industrialization of animal agriculture. People don't want to see the messy side. They want a package. It seems if more people knew how a meat gets on to their plate they might have a different view of it. That is why I don't eat meat. I was too disturbed at the process. Your self-righteous condescension and intellectually lazy knee-jerking does nothing but make your views (and those of your cause) sound like the ravings of an ignorant suburban kid that saw a couple documentaries about industrial farming and suddenly understood humanity. Nothing is that easy. It's not black and white. But, converts to any cause usually prove to be the most mindless and self-righteous.
Unreal 1 year, 5 months ago
Orbiter, you didn't even address what my points were in my previous comment. All you did was call me names and make assumptions as far as what I know about farms. People have no business trying to slaughter animals in their backyards with no oversight. What if young children next door saw a pig shot, strung up, neck sliced open with blood gushing everywhere. That would more than likely traumatized them. And contrary to your belief, humans are not adapted to eat meat even though we think we are. If we were, we would not get diseases like cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and on and on. All of these directly linked to an animal-based diet. Besides, if humans were true carnivores as you implied, our digestive system, colon, etc. would be designed like a carnivore, we wouldn't have to cook our meat, and we would salivate when looking at a dead animal. So please spare me the whole "humans have evolved to eat meat" nonsense. The facts prove completely opposite. And believe me, I would love to show undercover slaughterhouse and factory farm footage to every grade school kid out there. I guarantee you, over half if not more would quit eating meat on the spot. But the problem with "teaching" killing animals is that when the child is clearly traumatized by what they have witnessed, they simply get a pat on the head and told this is just the way things are. When they absolutely do not have to be that way. But they aren't taught that they can eat a plant-based diet and that nothing has to die to feed them. And who cares what has been going on for millions of years? Those were different times. The times we're living in now clearly shows that our world trying to live on an animal-based diet is just simply not sustainable. Even if everyone tried to buy from local farms, they too would eventually be forced into factory farming practices because there are just simply too many humans on this planet. You should read the book "The China Study" and watch "Forks Over Knives". Then maybe you'll see that even though eating an animal-based diet has been the norm, it is no longer sustainable or good for our health.
shleppy 1 year, 5 months ago
i prefer the backyard to some of the practices going on in feedlots and slaughterhouses.
hmm 1 year, 5 months ago
This is a great idea. I don't eat meat, but I did participate in a turkey slaughter last year, and found it to be very educational. It can be slightly disturbing when you're not used to it, but I think it can be done respectfully. People have been hunting and eating meat since the beginning of people. We're just so far removed at this point that we find the reality upsetting. Better to not live in the dark, and to have skills to be self-sufficient.
RuralWanderer 1 year, 5 months ago
Classes like these are popping up around the country because of the increased interest in local foods and being responsible for your own food. I'd love to attend one locally. I've butchered my own chickens (if done right, it is not as disgusting as you'd think), but would love to take a class on pigs and cattle.
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