Meathouse Renovation

Hi, I have been wanting to share my new project that is still a work in progress at the moment. Since School holidays are upon us, I have had a bit more time to devote to fiddling around with our new meathouse.

We use a meathouse when we go and get a killer to put in the freezer. My husband is the butcher around our house, and we use a meathouse to hang the carcasse overnight, and to chop up the animal into different cuts of meat.

Nearly every farm in Australia would have a meathouse, or at the least an old one used in days gone by. Not so many know how to kill their own, and some farmers just get their butcher to cut one up for them when they are busy (or can't be bothered).

It really is something else to be able to go out and find a good looking lamb to kill, and dress it yourself. It is a dying art, and not only do you get meat you grew yourself - it is always yummier. It is an environmentally friendly way to fill your freezer with cheap lamb too. And we all know how expensive a lamb roast is at the butcher's these days!

Anyway, back when we were living at our old house we didn't have a meathouse to use.  So we transported the one at our house today with a crane. We poured a slab of concrete and craned it in and used it for many years. It was a gorgeous one that was all weatherboard and huge in size. Had we known the future, we would of left the meathouse where it was, and it would be still standing next to our house today.

Instead of craning the old one back in again, we found another one on another property which will do the trick. It already had a slab we could move it on, so we got two tractors and a truck to shift it to our house.

I helped my husband shovel a couple of trailerloads of dirt to create a nice pad to lay the slab on.

Here she is....

She needs new gauze, we have ripped all the fibro off already and we have iron panels coming to tack on to the walls.

This is the remainder of the fibro we took off, it is all gone now.

The hanging space.

This is where we will hang the carcasse from. You could fit a couple in here no worries.

View out the door.


So you can see she needs some love, it will be functional and practical. Very handy for us!

Electricity and water will be next to be hooked up to it. A bit of trenching will be happening soon.

Meanwhile, if I disappear for a while - you will know I have been given the job of painting the whole thing. There is a lot of timber to cover, more painting than I thought possible!