Baumann Stainless Steel Convertible Arrival
Last summer I wrote that for my birthday I was getting a Stainless Steel Convertible. Well, it arrived! It was shipped all the way from German where they make these beauties. Roll down top, high quality stainless steel all around and a powerful three phase motor under the hood. This baby can hum! And wash 500 lb pigs! In fact that’s what the the Baumann Scalder Dehairer excels at.
Inspecting the Beast
The dehairer is the largest thing I’ve lifted or carried with our tractor. Probably both in weight and size. Certainly as measured by value. The machine is 108″ long plus extensions plus the extra two feet or so of the super duper pallet it was sitting on. I requested a Lift Gate truck for delivery. The lift gate was not capable of actually unloading the machine.
In fact, the delivery guy’s jack couldn’t lift it since the dehairer’s pallet was so long. We used logging chains on the tractor to pull the dehairer out of the tractor trailer truck. With the lift gate taking half the load and the tractor forks taking the other half of the load we gently lowered it to the ground in sync. Nerve wracking to say the least.
Everything went perfectly – I was rather nervous simply because the machine was so big, so expensive and it had taken eight months to get it here. I didn’t want to drop it and be set back. Yes, I had placed insurance on it that morning but the time it would take to get a replacement would cost us dearly.
Carrying it up the Mountain
Once we got the Baumann down to the ground I dragged it backwards off the truck’s lift gate using the logging chains and repositioned our tractor sideways of the Baumann to carry it up the mountain.
Realize that the load was so wide and tall I couldn’t see anything in front of me. Ben, Will and Holly walked ahead to guide me as I drove blind. The trip up the five hundred feet or so of our driveway was slow and uneventful. I like boring.
Guard Dog Kavi Supervising the Storage of the Baumann
It will be a few months before we’re ready to install this nice shiny new machine. We’re still locked in ice up here on the mountain. For now we have a stainless steel lawn ornament. (Hmm… Make note to self to plant a lawn to go with ornament.) It is tucked in, tarped and plywooded behind barrels and thick logs to protect it until we’re ready to install it in our on-farm butcher shop’s Abattoir. When we’re ready to dehair, it’s there.
Outdoors: 54°F/19°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 70°F/65°F
Daily Spark: He who hesitates is sometimes saved. -James Thurber
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
Woo hoo! I really like machines :). So glad your dehairer has arrived undamaged. I know the installation will be a really big deal – until then I suppose you and Holly can give it an affectionate pat as you pass by during your rounds.
Glad to see you John Deere is back and performing to 110%. now just wondering you being frugal and all why you would spend a whole bunch of money on your”convertible” when you could just as easy Skin your carcass?
Ooo! Ooo! An easy question!
The reason for buying a scalder/dehairer is that it allows me to earn a lot more money than I would if I skinned the carcasses. It also saves a lot of time – it’s much faster than skinning. I’ve skinned many a pig so I’m familiar with that method. Realize that we sell a lot of roaster pigs which must be scalded, not skinned. Additionally the skins are sale-able on the meat – chef’s request this. Then there is the problem that skinning loses some valuable fat, no matter how good you are. Plus eventually we want to make chicharones a.k.a. puffed pork rinds and for that we need the skins de-haired and on the pig. Additionally, keeping the skin on during chilling gives better meat quality and that’s the name of the game. Lastly, the scald step kills bacteria which is an important USDA HACCP/PR step in the process of making food safe. All this makes scalding a necessity.
On the other hand, buying another tractor won’t earn me any more money. I would like to buy another tractor so I have a backup incase of the inevitable emergency but for now I rent them for about $550 per month when our tractor is down. John Deere was offering 0% financing this winter and I was sorely tempted. I went in and talked with the dealer, found out the costs, applied for their special financing and was accepted. In the end I didn’t get it as I decided, in part, I wasn’t ready to have the expense burden of about $800 more per month. Maybe next year. For now it would be a luxury to own a second tractor.
What about the pigs over 500lbs? Do you use an engine hoist to load unload?
We will have a hoist for lifting the carcasses up and then into the scalder dehairer and then lifting them again up to the rail for their trip to the chiller. For pigs bigger than 500 lbs we’ll have to skin them either on the hoist or a cradle. The hoist will be a powerful 2 ton three phase unit. Originally I planned to put it on a gliding rail but I’m thinking about maybe doing it from a fixed point. That would be simpler, fewer moving parts, all those sorts of good things.
Es lebe die Brühmaschine !
I actually just watched a video of one in action while having a snack – ah, the things you learn to regard as normal/necessary whilst eating an Ancestral Health diet :)
Hi Walter, big fans of you here (my wife ordered from you when we lived in California). Out of curiosity, has the Baumann paid off as you calculated? We have a friend here (now in Washington) that raises pork but has no reasonable way of dehairing.