I thought I would expand a little on the cuts vs. whole/half animals post a little since there were a couple of comments on my previous post. First of all I don't believe I'll ever get to a point where I don't do any individual cuts (although I could be wrong), but I would like to get a point where it is a very small portion of the sales. As I detailed in the last post I strongly believe that a whole/half is the most sustainable for all involved, but I also understand that there will always be a majority of customers/potential customers who like the convenience of only buying pork chops and bacon.
In our case we sell the individual cuts through multiple sources ... at a farmers' market, through an on-line order food cooperative, monthly deliveries to a group of customers in the Des Moines area, and off the farm. With all of those various methods of selling (some of which overlap) keeping an inventory is a requirement. That inventory takes quite a bit of time as we keep track not only of quantity, but also of weights (we use a spread sheet at the farmers' market with weights to make selling easier). When we process a hog (or anything else) that will be for sale as individual cuts there is also an extra charge at the locker to make it an "official" animal and have labels with weights. On top of all of that time there is also the expense of running freezers, or in my case of never having enough freezers!
As you might imagine all of that adds up to quite a bit of extra time and money spent in order to offer the convenience of individual cuts. I can see the benefit of individual cuts if you were just doing it for a few cuts (burger and steaks as mentioned in one of the comments), but if I could get away from it I would. We do try to keep everything that we can get a label for. That means we have plenty of lard, leaf lard, and pork soup bones. And, at certain times of the year we really get overloaded on things like ham, ham hocks, and roast.
On the flip side when we sell a whole there is no need for freezer space, there is no inventory, and there is not as much time spent in selling it. This was our first year doing a pay-as-it-grows program on the pigs and it seems like there was a decent amount of interest in that. It is something that takes a bit more paper work and time, but if you compare it to the individual cuts you realize it isn't so bad I think. Plus, when the whole hog is sold there isn't any "tough sell" cuts left over and with a little education I think our customers will really come to appreciate getting those cuts!
Like a said ... just a few more thoughts on the cuts vs. whole animal discussion ...
:: Farm Rock :: This Too Shall Pass ... by OK Go ... watch here ... buy here ::
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