Dear Bacon Lover,

You and me, we have something in common. We both love bacon. Probably sausage, too. At our farm, we raise heritage breed pigs in a woodland setting where they can forage for acorns, get their noses as dirty as they like, breath in plenty of fresh mountain air, and ramble around in ample wooded pens. Our pigs are born and bred on farm, raised with a high level of human touch and interaction (including belly rubs) and treated with the utmost care.

Today we are inviting you up to our farm in south central Pennsylvania to a bacon- and sausage-making workshop. Sebastiaan Zijp, a professional chef who has been with the farm close to a year, will lead the workshop, which we are all pretty sure you will find to be fun, informative, and valuable. To make sure you get the most out of our workshop, we keep them intimate and focused. 

You'll learn 

• The basics of pork butchering;
• Safe knife handling techniques for deboning pork;
• How to cure and flavor bacon; 
• How to prep sausage, including calculating the fat to lean ratio, how to homogenize the mix, seasoning; and
• How to stuff sausage and make sausage links.

You'll make and take home

• Approx 4 lbs of bacon upon which to complete the curing process
• Approx 7 lbs of sausage, of a variety of flavors and finishes (loose, small links, large links)

General schedule

9:45-ish am - Arrive at the farm, check in, have some coffee and perhaps some bacon biscuits
10:30 am - Basics of pork butchering and knife handling
11:00 am - Bacon curing session
12:30 - Lunch (provided) and a tour of the pigging operations
1:45 pm -  Sausage-making session
4:00 pm - Package up your sausage and bacon; and close the workshop

Our farm is a little over two hours' drive from D.C.; Baltimore, Md.; and Pittsburgh, Penn. Come early and have some coffee and biscuits with us or reserve one of our rooms for Friday and/or Saturday night. If there are particular pork cuts you want to purchase, give us a heads up and we'll do our best to make sure that's available for you. As a general rule, we often have other cuts of pork, frozen and available for sale. Bring a cooler and ice packs in any case, as you'll need that to carry your sausage and bacon home.

Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you soon!

Dan Earnest

Farmer 

PS - If you're looking for an interesting and valuable gift to give someone, consider getting them a gift certificate to one of our upcoming workshops in January and February 2013. 

PPS - If you and a group of friends want a private and/or customized workshop for four to six people, just ask and we'll work something out together.