Lard Almighty

Over the Christmas Break, we rendered the lard. I had decided to use a menagerie of smaller jars this year, because the quart jars last year were generally too much to handle at one time. I prefer the smaller ones.

We kept 2 hogs in 2014, but we rendered the lard from just one (gave the fat from the other away to a friend for use in his venison sausage). This was just over 21 pounds. It was a good sized batch to work with.

Holly managed all the grinding. We keep the fat in the freezer until it's time to render. But we must remember next time to let it thaw a bit more, as it's too hard to cut and grind if it's too frozen or too soft.

The outside method worked great. We were completely done and cleaned up in 2.5 hours, which was better than the 6 hour marathon of last year.

We ended up with 24 varied-sized jars of lovely lard and 3 quarts of cracklins. The lard is in the freezer, and the birdies -- cold from the freezing spell of that week -- enjoyed the cracklins.