Pork shares
Pork shares built around your freezer
A hog gives you more genuinely different cuts than a beef does for its size: chops, roasts, ribs, side and ground, all from one animal. A share lets you decide how that split goes.
What the shop takes
Perry Butcher Co. processes whole and half hogs under Maine's custom exemption. Your portion comes back cut to the sheet you filled in, wrapped, labeled, and marked not for sale.
The process
How a pork share works
Ask what is available
Call about current pork share availability and timing.
Buy in while the animal is alive
Ownership is arranged before slaughter, as the custom exemption requires.
Mock it up online
Rough out chops, roasts, ribs, side and ground on the pork cut sheet. It is a planning tool, and nothing is sent.
Save it and come in
Print or save your sheet, call to arrange a time, and finalize the cuts with the butcher in person.
Processed and collected
Cut to what you agreed, wrapped, labeled and marked not for sale.
The ownership interest has to be arranged before slaughter, while the animal is alive. That is what makes a share legal under Maine's custom exemption, and it cannot be arranged afterwards. Call early and it is a non-event.
The pork share cut sheet you fill in online is a planning tool. It does not arrange the share, and nothing on it reaches the shop until you bring it in.
What a hog yields
Five parts, five different jobs
Pork rewards planning more than beef does, because the same animal can go in several directions. Work down the diagram and decide what each part should become.
Loin
Every chop on the animal, bone-in or boneless, plus loin roast and the whole tenderloin.
Shoulder
Boston butt for pulled pork, picnic roast, shoulder steaks, and the best pork to grind.
Ham
Fresh ham roast and ham steaks. Lean, and closer to loin than to the cured ham most people picture.
Belly & side
Fresh side, excellent roasted or braised whole.
Ribs
Spare ribs, loin backs, and meatier country-style ribs from the shoulder end.