*December 4th-6th class is OPEN*

The yield of the pig is so expansive and diverse that we lack the time to cover it all in our original Family Pig class. The Family Pig II is a three-day harvest of completely new material. It is not merely adding recipes to the list, but conferring competency in traditional processes to establish the well-off frugality of the family table.

Using antique cutlery and your hands, this extensive class transforms a heritage breed pig into fresh, fermented, and preserved pork. Among the many techniques, we will make and learn to use a preservation brine. We will make rillettes, preserving meat with fat in the confit pot. The intestines will be treated artfully, beguiling their customary baseness. We will transform the head into headcheese, and the trotters into a meal that has become a favorite at the Sheard table. 

Though it is a “part II” to The Family Pig series, no prior experience is required. The Family Pig II is simultaneously another way to harvest a pig, and a way for those who have been to The Family Pig to broaden the human power of artful nourishment.

*SPRING 2026 CLASS OPEN: APRIL 16th-18th*

The Family Pig I is an earnest and winsome course in domestic pig raising, harvesting and eating. Inspired by the pig, we go deep and wide in the preservation of pork, the salting of bacon, the harvesting of innards, the carving of flesh and the unreproved indulgence in fat and salt.

You take with you not only a package of educational material and sausage of your own making, but the working knowledge of harvesting two pigs from the field to the two-year-old prosciutto hanging in your kitchen.