Saint Stephen's Pig Roast

St. Stephen’s is a Catholic Church in Sacramento, California that celebrates High Latin Mass, where some of the residents here at FFF like to attend. Every year St. Stephen’s Parish provides a large pig roast for the parishioners to celebrate their patron on his feast day!

For those of you who don’t know, St. Stephen is considered the very first martyr in the Catholic Church. He is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles and was one of the first seven deacons appointed by the Apostles to distribute food and charitable aid to the poorer members of the community in the early church. Members of the Jewish synagogues had challenged Stephen's Christian teachings, but Stephen had bested them in debate. Furious at this humiliation, they dragged Stephen out to be stoned.

Anyways, about six months ago we had some pigs escape from their pen to head out into the wilderness. While on Ty's (oldest Zeiter kid) maternity photoshoot with Ali (fourth Zeiter kid), they saw the pigs had multiplied and had a bunch of piglets! As the pig roast grew closer, Isaiah (ranch manager) and Stephenson (farmer) knew they wanted to participate in the event and so asked Phil if they could donate the escaped pigs! “If you can catch them then go for it!” he laughed. So they began to put grain out in one particular spot in the fields to entice the pigs back… And it worked! One day they spotted the small herd out there and quickly recruited the Whites to help corral them. Success! They now had about 6 seventy-five pound pigs to donate to the St. Stephen’s parish celebration. Once they caught the pigs, the event coordinator was happy to accept the gift!

To help harvest the pigs for the day of roasting, a group of parishioners showed up on the Friday before. Father McWhirter came with them and blessed both the animals and the ranch in thanks for the bounty. Then they roasted the pigs all night long in preparation for the big day.

The event began with a High Mass on Saturday and was quickly followed by the activities of good food, good friends, good play, and an all around good time!