Sunday, November 11, 2012
Our first hard frost of the year
This year our first hard frost came in a bit late. Our frost came in on November 9th, this Friday. It killed off all our annual plants so we'll be tossing those green bits to Cow and the Sheep. We'll also put in the garlic and see about what other items we might want to play with.
A lull in the bacon
Today we were able to slaughter the last of our piggies. Ivan keeps
exploring his surroundings but is not yet aware that he should not be
near big omnivores that can eat him, so we figured the best thing to do
would be to process our piggies while we work on our gardening
infrastructure. This will allow us to move piggies easier in the future
and keep the geese and ducks away from our young trees and make for a
more pleasant entertaining areas.
We've noticed that with each slaughter it keeps getting easier and easier, but today was insane. We were able to process everything before 8pm and everything clean by 9pm. The curing meats are ready for the brine, the bacon are in bags curing and ready for next weekend to be smoked, the rest of the meat is packaged and in the freezer. The extra help with a means of lifting the piggy and having a large freezer really helped out. I think everything just seemed to flow smoother today.
It was nice to have hearty chili (Digger heart) on the wood burning stove during the day so that we could take a break when it was needed. In the future we'll advertise food earlier so that people can eat when they need. I think the second table was very helpful, but we needed to have the area set up earlier and with more access to piggies. I think an extra sink would be really nice so that we can have two points of meat to help the baggers not have a lull. For the most part I think today worked really well. I think another point that really worked in our favor was that our piggy was not too big. I think moving towards a smaller heritage breed and slaughtering them earlier will help us out a lot more.
The odd thing with Squeaks was that she was not fatty at all. We ended up with tons of fat off of Oreo and Digger, as well as Macaroon, but Squeaks was just lean and beautifully textured. I'm not sure what the change was or if it was just that we didn't put it tons of food for her to wallow in. She ate whenever she was hungry, but not to the point of wasting food. We'll see how our next hogs go.
We've noticed that with each slaughter it keeps getting easier and easier, but today was insane. We were able to process everything before 8pm and everything clean by 9pm. The curing meats are ready for the brine, the bacon are in bags curing and ready for next weekend to be smoked, the rest of the meat is packaged and in the freezer. The extra help with a means of lifting the piggy and having a large freezer really helped out. I think everything just seemed to flow smoother today.
It was nice to have hearty chili (Digger heart) on the wood burning stove during the day so that we could take a break when it was needed. In the future we'll advertise food earlier so that people can eat when they need. I think the second table was very helpful, but we needed to have the area set up earlier and with more access to piggies. I think an extra sink would be really nice so that we can have two points of meat to help the baggers not have a lull. For the most part I think today worked really well. I think another point that really worked in our favor was that our piggy was not too big. I think moving towards a smaller heritage breed and slaughtering them earlier will help us out a lot more.
The odd thing with Squeaks was that she was not fatty at all. We ended up with tons of fat off of Oreo and Digger, as well as Macaroon, but Squeaks was just lean and beautifully textured. I'm not sure what the change was or if it was just that we didn't put it tons of food for her to wallow in. She ate whenever she was hungry, but not to the point of wasting food. We'll see how our next hogs go.
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