When Chris La Veque was still working at restaurants, he’d go in on his days off and practice his newfound hobby of making sausages, mixing meat with herbs and spices as inspiration led him. “I wasn’t even clocking in because I love doing it so much,” he says. “It’s my passion.”

Burly, ruddy-cheeked and good-natured, the 25-year-old La Veque is exactly the guy in the room you’d think was the butcher. As the one-man force behind El Salchichero, he makes sausages, rillettes, crepinettes and other delicacies for sale at local farmers markets. He’s in the midst of transitioning to selling full cuts of meat , a precursor to his ultimate goal of opening an old-world butcher shop on the Westside, possibly as soon as this summer.

The Boulder Creek native used to be on the chef track. From his first job at Scopazzi to a degree at the California Culinary Academy to a stage, or apprenticeship, at David Kinch’s Manresa, La Veque seemed headed for restaurants. But through friends at Lindencroft Farm in Ben Lomond he met Justin Severino, another Kinch protégé, who was making a name for himself locally as Severino Community Butchers. Severino took him on, and La Veque was hooked. Through Severino he met Brad Briske, currently of Café Gabriella, and began working as sous-chef there, and later at Cellar Door—all the while making sausage, of course, which is regularly featured on Gabriella’s menu.

For La Veque, who grew up doing 4-H, humane production is essential. For pork he uses pasture-raised hogs from Devil’s Gulch Ranch in Marin County. “Because they’re happy pigs,” he says. “They’re treated very, very well. That’s what I base my business on—humanely raised animals. It’s far superior quality.”

La Veque says Devil’s Gulch pigs are finished on milk and bread, which gives their fat a creamy, buttery flavor that’s instantly recognizable as different from the norm. “Commercial pork has a very strong flavor that we think of as pork, but that’s the taste of factory farming,” he says. “There’s no room to move. They’re living in their own feces, and you can taste that.”

For La Veque and his friends, butchering meat that’s raised well is increasingly becoming an integrated part of life. Just weeks ago, he tells me, he helped a friend slaughter and butcher four cows to feed his family. “I think every meat eater should witness the harvest of an animal, large or small,” he says. “See what goes into it.”

That desire to respectfully participate in the production of meat drove Santa Cruz resident Charles Sigismund to learn how to butcher a hog not long ago, and to sign up for an upcoming class at TLC Ranch in Aromas on butchering chickens. “The industrial process is just a horrible one,” Sigismund says. “There’s a much more respectful way to do it. I wanted to see more of the process. It seems to me if you’re going to eat meat, you ought to know what it is.”

EL SALCHICHERO sausages are available at the Scotts Valley and Live Oak farmers markets.