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