Home Butchering

We raise Icelandic sheep for meat.  Turning beautiful animals that you have raised yourself into a pile of chops and roasts is not a pleasant task, but it gives you a deeper sense of respect for the animals that feed us.  I strive to provide them with a good life and a stress-free death.

I butcher the lambs around the beginning of November, when the daytime highs are in the 40's, before the heavy snows of winter set in.  By this time my pastures have stopped growing and I begin feeding my sheep hay.  Fewer mouths saves hay expenses.

I use the bucket on my tractor raise the lambs to a comfortable skinning height. Once the skin is partway off, I tie a rope to it that is tied to a tree and back the tractor up.  The hide peels off like a glove.

After gutting the carcass I rinse it with a hose and haul it to the garage.  Yes, that's blood on my clothes.

Where it hangs a day or two in the cold so that the meat firms up.

I use my woodworking bandsaw to cut roasts and chops.  I sterilize the blade and wheels with clorox and cover the table with butcher paper.

The work table, where the cut pieces are placed for bagging, is also covered with butcher paper.

I don't have a regular meat saw, but a hacksaw works fine on lamb.

Here I am sawing through the ribs.  Before this I remove the forelegs with a knife.  One of the interesting anatomical discoveries you make the first time you butcher a lamb or a deer is that the forelegs are not connected to the rest of skeleton by any bones.  They are connected to the shoulder blade, which is attached to the rib cage by muscle.  You cut all around that muscle with your knife and presto, the whole works comes off.  In the picture above the flanks have also already been removed.

Home butchering also gives you a deeper appreciation for what surgeons in hospitals do.  Their work is essentially a refined form of butchery - blood and guts, knives and saws.   But the stakes are so much higher. 

I remove the meat from the rib bones.  This, along with the flank and various other off-cuts, go into the meat grinder.  Marja uses the ground lamb to make delicious lamburgers that I prefer over any ground beef that I have ever tasted.