This site was created by someone else who noticed that the art of rendering was being lost through ignorance, a shortage of family hogs, and a foolish belief that diet has anything to do with longevity. Here's how to render lard and turn it into soap. Incidentally, there is a music group called Lard. It was only a matter of time. Homemade Lard First, you get yourself a shoat, or weaner pig, or better still two.
Shoats are pigs that are just weaned.
Pigs are young hogs. You want to get the vocabulary right. You might get a pig butchered for a pig roast, but you would normally keep feeding it until it was a hog. Two pigs are better than one for producing lard since two pigs compete for food, eating far more than necessary in their desire to beat out the other pig. You can render any pork fat, but the leaf lard is the epicure's choice.