LIFESTYLES
WEEKEND, MAY 28-29, 2016
“You know
where your meat
comes from”
— Rod Isaacson, butcher
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
R
od Isaacson was busy
Tuesday, unusual for him
this time of year in the Walla
Walla Valley. He slaughtered two
lambs, six pigs and a small cow.
Wednesday he had just a couple
of smaller hogs to butcher. Come
harvest in the fall, he will slaughter
around 20 beef a week, along with
15 to 20 hogs and several smaller
animals.
Rod, 40, a husband and father
of a 15-year-old son, can have half
a hog hanging in the cold storage
of the mobile slaughter trailer in
15 minutes and a beef in 45.
“There’s no butchers left,”
Rod said while getting ready to
hoist hogs he skinned in a small
pasture off Stateline Road near
Milton-Freewater. “It’s a dying
breed.”
Rod has worked as a butcher
more than 14 years, he said,
most of that with Haun’s Meat &
Sausage, just a few minutes down
the road.
“When I started, there were
three shops in the valley,” Rod
said. “Now there’s just us.”
Rod handles the mobile
slaughter end of the business,
hauling everything he needs to do
the work right on the spot. Rod
said he got into the business the
typical way: “I just took the job.”
He used a .22-caliber rifl e to
put down the hogs Wednesday.
He has larger caliber guns for
larger animals. He said he aims
for a clean kill. He does not want
a wounded animal to run wild, he
said, and there is nothing worse
than the screams from a pig.
Neither screamed after he shot
them Wednesday, then made quick
slices across their throats to bleed
them out.
“I’ve been doing it long enough
now it really doesn’t bother me
any more,” he said.
Rod said he hails from Olympia,
Washington, but moved around as
a child, and his father used to trap.
“I watched my dad and an old
guy skin all the time,” he said.
“Truth be told, I never skinned
once until I got this job.”
And the work he does, he said,
is not like hunting wild game and
is not glorious. Bending over four
or fi ve hours a day at the peak of
slaughter season can take a toll, he
said.
But Rod is diligent and frugal
in his efforts. He placed the hog
carcasses on sturdy aluminum
work benches and briskly severed
the hides. Every few moments
he slid the blade in swift strokes
along a sharpening steel.
Taking the skin off by hand is
old school, he said. “Everywhere
else in the world — or damn near
— scalds them.”
He also views the job through a
practical lens.
“You know where your meat
comes from,” he said.
Those attitudes pervade the
small business Jerry Haun and
his wife Dee Haun started in
1996. Jerry’s experience as a meat
processor goes back 35 years.
Both of his grandfathers had meat
businesses and his father was a
butcher.
Years ago, Jerry said, he and
Rod split the slaughter work. Jerry
now spends most of his time at the
base of operations taking care of
the processing end, from hanging
meats to age in cold storage to
brining cuts to smoking them in
the smoke house he bought used
in 1994 for $12,000.
Today, he said, that same
model with all its modern “bells
and whistles” would go for more
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Rod Isaacson with Haun’s Meat & Sausage uses a hacksaw to cut through the sternum of a hog while slaughtering a pair of the
animals Wednesday outside of Milton-Freewater.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE
DRIVE
Walla Walla Valley’s only mobile
butcher last of a dying breed
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Dee Haun, center, prepares T-bone steaks for packaging while Rod Isaacson cuts meat Wednes-
day at Haun’s Meat & Sausage, a mobile slaughter outfi t outside of Milton-Freewater.
$70,000.
Dee is right there by Jerry in
the shop helping customers and
cutting and wrapping meat.
Pork is the primary product of
Haun’s Meat & Sausage, which
processes about 400 to 500 pigs
a year, most for a cadre of regular
customers. The Hauns keep all
those orders on paper rather than
digital fi les.
“A computer is only as good as
the people inputting the informa-
tion,” he said.
Running the local endeavor
takes national and global connec-
tions. A grinder for making
hamburger comes from Europe.
The plastic wrap for that beef is
from a company in Pennsylvania.
And the little metal clips for those
packages also are from out of
state.
Jerry serves as the executive
secretary for the Northwest Meat
Processors Association’s Board of
Directors, and that organization
is an affi liate of the American
Association of Meat Processors.
He also puts his meat on the line.
One wall at the shop displays
the multitude of “grand cham-
pion” plaques Haun’s Meat has
Dee Haun uses a steak wiper to fi nish
beef short ribs . The wiper uses rotat-
ing brushes to remove excess pieces
of meat and fat from the cut.
won in competitions, primarily for
bone-in ham.
He explained each competition
has several grand champions,
one for each cut of meat. Those
winners then compete for the big
title of best in show.
Jerry said he has come close
to that in years past, mere points
away even.
Then at the Northwest Meat
Processors Association’s contest
of March 19 in Moscow, Idaho,
his bone-in ham took it all.
Being the little guy against
bigger operations made it that
much more special.
And if Jerry, Dee and Rod
prove anything, it’s that bigger
does not always mean better.
———
Contact Phil Wright at
pwright@eastoregonian.com or
541-966-0833.
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Dee Haun reaches out to pet Bobo in a pasture next to Haun’s
Meat & Sausage. The Hauns raise their own beef and slaughter the
animal for the meat.
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Jerry Haun injects brine into a cut of pork while prepping the meat for the curing process Wednesday
at Haun’s Meat & Sausage.