During a two-part workshop led by Jake Levin, The Roving Butcher, a whole certified organic pig will be processed on-farm. Participants will gain the knowledge needed to process animals on their own. Participants can attend one or both workshops.
In this first part of the workshop Jake Levin, The Roving Butcher, will prepare a hog for butchering using humane methods. After thanks are spoken for the animal's life, she will be stunned (a non-painful process endorsed by Temple Grandin), bled, scalded, scraped and eviscerated. The carcass will then be hung for a week in preparation for butchering.
The meat being prepared during the workshop will not be available for sale because it will not have been processed at a USDA facility.
About the Instructor:
Jake Levin is a whole-animal butcher who grew up in New Marlborough, MA. After graduating from Wesleyan University where he studied art, he moved to NYC. In NYC hepursued his work as an artist. During this time Jake became intensely involved with cooking and with the growing local-food movement. Living in Williamsburg he became a part of a community of people committed to local and sustainably produced food. In the summer of 2010 Jake began his studies at Bard College working towards an MFA. He also decided to train as a nose-to-tail butcher. He apprenticed for three months at Fleisher’s Meat in Kingston NY, where he learned the craft of whole animal butchery. In the spring of 2012 Jake moved back to New Marlborough, with his wife, Silka Glanzman, with whom he has a local food blog- the Butcher & the Baker. He moved back home because he wanted to help to grow and strengthen the food community he grew up in. Besides being the Produce Manger at the Berkshire Co-op, he is on the board of directors of Berkshire Grown, a founding member of Berkshire Food Guild, and runs a meat consulting and education company called the Roving Butcher.
