Lard-I'm covered in it!

I bought a pig. Not a whole pig mind you- just a half.  It seemed like the smart thing to do, pasture raised and loved on by my friends at Taproot farm.  They even went the extra hundred miles or so to bring the pig to a more pig friendly butcher who doesn't make its last days torture and doesn't use MSG in the seasoning of their sausage.  So happy pig means happy, delish meat, right? 
OHH you betcha!
In addition to the great sausage, bacon and ham, i got roasts and ribs and FAT-two 12-13lb bags of it.  oh the joy i felt at seeing these bags of greasy fat was beyond describing.  All the things I could cook with it and the soap i could make….  and before you know it all my available crock pots were toiling in the rendering of lard and the house reeked of fatty goodness.  Once again i pulled out the computer to see what the google machine was saying about lard and found so many reasons why it was good for you, that i grabbed a bowl full o cracklin's and snuggled in for a pleasant evening of lard research.
 After doing more reading than any person should do on pig fat i had to wonder why we had been so ready to trade in something as tried and true as lard, for a crisco replacement that turned out to be so bad for us. The reasons were many and went from the meat industry controlling high lard prices, necessitating the need for a cheap replacement- To the cotton industry attempting to make a cheaper alternative using cottonseed oil that was a byproduct of the cotton harvest.  arch! 
  So many things ran through my mind as i read about the benefits of lard but these benefits were realized only if the animal was raised on pasture.  Pigs dancing in the sun, rolling in muddy pits being fanned by cute farm boys and girls ran through my mind... It seems at every turn i am reminded of how we are what we eat (and what they ate and how happy them eats were before we ate them).   So while crunching away on cracklin's i ended up smack dab in the middle of the most disturbing of uses- lard lotion.  Yes as well as cooking and soap making you can make a wonderful lotion of this vitamin packed oil, rich in the very things you pay bunches for in the store.  Ewww you say? So said I until i made some, and used it.  All i can say now is next year i'll be going whole hog… Heh heh heh!