Remember this?
and this?
Well, now we have this
and this.
Dear Reader:
There is no book in print less than a century old that treats pork, ruminant or poultry husbandry, slaughter and preservation in one volume. These have become divided fields, resulting in a disjointed narrative.
Even with this fragmentation and our increasing estrangement from our sustenance, people still believe that once meat growing was a simple delight of human scale. It has been my joy, passion and full employment for 8 years to dress this hope in knowledge and capability through my classes and online education. The purpose of Farmstead Meatsmith is to unlock the peasant art of porcine abundance from field to plate.
For the past decade, I have been the farmer, slaughterman, butcher, charcutier and cook simultaneously. I have learned that though these are separate disciplines, each worth a lifetime of pursuit, they all fit in the peasant kitchen. This is not because peasants are primitive, limited to the artless struggle to fill the stomach. To this day, the best ham in the world is made using peasant methods. No, the home-cook could raise, slaughter, butcher, cure and cook the family pig because the peasant kitchen is magnanimous. The cures that hold winter’s famine at bay also taste very well. Thrift and extravagance kiss in the peasant kitchen.
To share the fruit of this kind of kitchen, I want to offer a community to you. This community will include resources for an earnest and winsome approach to domestic livestock raising, harvesting and eating…the only one of its kind in the country.
If the thoughts and mission stated here on our website interest you, I invite you to consider all the tools and inspirations we can bring your home table. As you work to grow your domestic altar around Harvest we look forward to hearing of all the fruits that come your way through the little yet hopeful message of your servant,
Brandon Sheard
Here’s what’s included:
Resource Library
- All 10 The Butcher’s Salt e-chapters
- To Kill a Pig Nicely slaughter film (unedited version); free edited version available on YouTube here)
- Archived Live Chats: 55 (and counting) past chats (over an hour of conversation time each).
Exclusive Articles
Written by Brandon, our 20+ Harvest Journal entries will supply not a little inspiration, philosophy and know-how on the multi-dimensional topics of slaughter, butchery, cookery, charcuterie, wrappery, cutlery, roastery, etc.
Exclusive Videos
Here we introduce our Harvest Journal Films: Demonstrative sessions with Brandon on a wide variety of topics. We filmed in both our butcher shop & on the fields of local small Pacific Northwest farms.
*Our response to the need for immediate homestead food security in 2020 resulted in a making available a small handful of our older videos here, for free, which were edited and listed on our YouTube channel. This vault contains the vast majority of films exclusively for our members, 5 years long now in its curation (nearly 50 films).
Meatsmith Community
- Access to our killer private Facebook Group, Meatsmith Table. Includes live access to podcast recordings. Send us your comments and questions pertaining to the topic at hand.
- Monthly Facebook Live Chats with Brandon, our primary way of providing fresh, real-time, and consistent engagement with our members. Brandon hops on the private Meatsmith Table FB group for Live Q&A with our members. You receive more unfiltered ‘Brandon’ time, without podcast ‘filler’.
“What I appreciate about The Butcher’s Salt is its unadulterated, and unadorned–even brazen–commitment to simplicity and starting. Many people won’t attempt something until all the questions are answered. As a result, they never start. But Brandon Sheard distills everything to its most elegant simplicity then says “go for it.” What a breath of fresh air in a tepid, timid, paranoid world. You don’t have to know everything to start something.” -Joel Salatin, Polyface Farms
Resource Library
- All 10 of our The Butcher’s Salt e-chapters, released monthly
- Digital copy of our To Kill a Pig Nicely slaughter film
Praise for The Butcher’s Salt:
“The Sheard family and their crew possess an acutely rare gift: perspective. Their business cares for animals through the entire cycle of life, death, and the culinary afterlife. In our super specialized food system, very few people have this hands-on knowledge to share. Enjoy their heartfelt and hard-won experience in these useful guides.” –Marissa La Brecque (Guiggiana), Primal Cuts: Cooking with America’s Best Butchers
Exclusive Articles
Our bank of 20+ Harvest Journal Articles includes varying topics of slaughter, butchery, cookery, charcuterie, wrappery, cutlery, roastery, etc. These were hand-written by firelight, with quill and ink pot, by Brandon.
*We’ve transitioned out of writing these regularly, but have added the feature of engaging with our members during podcast recording, to take it’s place. We’d like to expound on any subject you’d like, live, during our podcasts…and you hear it first, weeks (or months!) before we release the edited version to our free audiences.
Excerpt from 1st Journal:
“And it came out when I was talking with Andrew about scalding and scraping. There are a million reasons to de-hair, rather than to skin a pig: crackling on roasts, rinds on whole muscle cures, even bacteria for salami, to name a few. But what impressed Andrew as the black scurf slipped off to reveal the perfectly hairless and white skin beneath, was how effortless it seemed. It looked as if it was meant to come off that way.
I scald a pig because it is irresistibly scaldable.”
- pig killing and scalding
- ruminant killing, skinning and eviscerating
- splitting and quartering ruminants
- dry curing principles and philosophy
- fencing pigs
- offal cookery
- lamb butchery
- cure care (including philosophy, mold, hanging, environments, cutting and more…)
Exclusive Films
Demonstrative sessions with Brandon in our butcher shop or on the field. This vault (nearly 50 films, shot over 4 years of harvesting) covers:
- sausage mixing, stuffing and linking
- rabbit killing & cooking
- knife sourcing & sharpening
- open-fire cookery
- 7-part series on poultry harvesting
- cold smoking
- ham brining
- Lamb Tartare
- Fenalar
- Bath Chaps
- various other charcuterie products
- chopping chops
- Plus many more topics
Meatsmith Community
This is the heart of our membership: intimate dialogue-with Brandon and other meatsmiths-in 3 manifestations.
- Access to our private Facebook Group; post pictures, films and be part of the lively conversation.
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- We record our bi-monthly podcast, A Meatsmith Harvest, while on Facebook Live with this group, so we welcome questions on our topic directly from you, real time.
- Monthly Facebook Live Chats where you can ask Brandon anything. Past chats are archived for your viewing in the Resource Library: 55+ recordings and counting!
“Brandon speaks from the heart of a poet, explaining at every step how to maximize utility and flavor while honoring the animal’s life with the utmost respect. His ability to connect a diversified audience with a part of food production that gets far too little attention is unparalleled….We cannot recommend learning with Brandon highly enough; he is a true gem!”
– Chris Kerston, Savory Institute Director of Events and Public Outreach
