Still more butchering...

Lest I wear anyone out by regaling still more stories of butchering, let me preface this by saying, I'm almost done here with the whole butchering scene for a while.  But, boy did I finish a pretty strong run of 4 weekends in a row!  Here is the rundown: I started with two of Boy's rabbits, moved up to a large wether, then did the 2 hogs I blogged about last week, and then this last week I helped process a rather large, misbehaving cow that messed up bad enough to get on Dad's "Short-list," so to speak.

If you think about how the last 4 weeks has played out with each weekend's slaughtering growing by at least doubling the weight each time, I HAVE to stop, or find a bison, or an elephant... Here are a few pictures:

Nephew and I coming out of cooler.  It was a big job hanging it, even in 6 pieces...

This picture is really disturbing to me, and here's why:  when I look at myself in this picture, I just see  the spit and image of my dad.  That's not disturbing in itself; what is disturbing is, it actually looks just like my dad with an ever-growing BALD SPOT! Which my dad doesn't have, incidentally. And, if we got to counting, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that I've got more grey hair than him, too!  Anyway, you can tell that we had brothers-in-law, nephews, a new friend, cousins, and last but certainly not least, fun.

I felt like it went really well for my first beef; (dad was still limping bad enough that he sat out; it wasn't HIS first beef) we had it skinned, gutted, quartered, and hung in a couple of hours. I didn't think that was too bad for a bunch of greenhorns.  We will let it age for a couple of weeks and then cut it down from there.

Serious Eats, and Serious Meats...

Is there anything better than sausage?  I'm sure there is, but as seriously as we take all of our meat at the Thistle and Lily, many of our favorite go-to meals involve sausage.  The humble hog, along with common herbs and spices, will supply an amazing variety of foods.  We took the opportunity this weekend alongside our favorite butchering-buddies, the Fall family, to really explore and expand our charcuterie skills.  We took a whole hog, (and a large one at that: 450lbs,) and butchered it for the sole purpose of sausage making, with the only exception being the tenderloin and, of course, the bacon.  We all agreed that if we wasted the bacon, then heaven would rain upon us fire, brimstone, lightning, and maybe even something really stinky as well, just so God could be sure of us knowing his displeasure at wasting bacon.

The Falls brought a hog to butcher as well, and together, we made nearly 260 pounds of pork to grind, mix, stuff, and/or smoke.  We've done something like this before, without ever committing an entire beast to sausage, though, and we feel like we always ran out of sausage too quickly, and aways previously, we've purchased the seasonings in premixed bags from commercial food processors.  We figured that if we're going to all the trouble of breeding, farrowing, and raising our own stock, why would we "sell out" at the last minute and trust someone else to make a quality sausage mix for us?  Well, we wouldn't, and neither would you.  We went "whole hog." I reckoned I could do it as well or better than those people, so Herself and I searched out the best sounding sausage recipes for pork sausages, and came up with recipes for the following:

German (or Garlic Sausage)

Kielbasa (our fave)

Sage breakfast

Italian

Andouille

Hot Links (the one exception)

Why, you ask?  Because we can.  And because we want to.  And because the Fall-Foster team is an awesome force to behold.  We could probably charge admission for people to come and watch the gore flying around.  We literally stuffed nearly TWO FOOTBALL FIELDS worth of sausage casings today!

Some of the ingredients.

about 9 foot long stretched out. 450 pounds.

Above is what 260 pounds of sausage looks like, bagged, roped and linked.  This is besides the other hog's ham, bacon, tenderloin, and loin roasts.

I know, a walk in freezer is a little over the top, right?  But if you are serious about your charcuterie, you NEED a walk-in freezer...

50 lbs of Kielbasa on the rotisserie.

And finally, kielbasas in the cooler next to the pork bellies brining for a week to be made into bacon.

I know that isn't for everybody, (obviously) but I can't express the amount of fulfillment I get from being a producer, instead of a consumer.  Not to mention providing for my family some seriously good eats!

The Dumbest Man Alive... (Or what Herself wants, Herself gets; Part II)

If, by chance, you thought you knew someone dumber than me, hopefully this post will toss out any such thought without any possible refutation.  I am going to present to you a pictorial argument that will leave you stunned and breathless, nothing short of amazed about how dumb I am, and how stupidly I spend my time. This is in regard to my shutters that I am building for my house, a completely frivolous venture to begin with.  But really what this whole thing stemmed from, is Herself and me looking through countless catalogs and Pinterest not being able to find just what we like, compounded by the problem that even something that we don't quite love being extraordinarily expensive.  So what are ya gonna do? You are just gonna make them yourself.  That's the only way you are going to get what you want for a price you can afford.  You just have to commit.  Stupid!

Boards cut, painted, stacked, ready for assembly.

Shutters assembled.

 Below is the really long (stupid long) process.  This is the hinge making portion, which is the part that really took up a lot of time.  You can see the process in the picture below, I cut the curved part out of big strap iron, and welded it onto the side the long skinny strap.  I made a template for cutting out the curved stuff, but it was still really laborious and tedious.

Here, below, you can see (somewhat) how laborious it was...

Then after the curved portion is cut and welded onto the main piece, I ground the weld down so that it would look as if it were one piece.  I could have, of course, just cut the whole thing out of one big wide piece, but that would have meant a substantial amount more money and a lot more waste.

Tweaking something; I'm unsure what I was doing. This is really a Show-
Off picture of my beautiful anvil.  Isn't She lovely?

With the side (mounting) brackets welded on.

Holes drilled for carriage bolts.

 And now we come to one of the REALLY dumb parts.  Round headed carriage bolts on my "Old World" looking hinges?  Get out!  Not happening here!  I had so much fun explaining to everyone who looked at me as if I were crazy, that I didn't want to do this, but that Herself insisted upon it, and even threatened if leave me if I couldn't come up with square headed bolts.  For some reason, she didn't think it was nearly as funny as I did...

 And viola! Square-headed bolts!  Its all about the details, right?  And Herself didn't leave me!  Marital crisis averted...

Close up view.

So, I think I hold the undisputed position of Dumbest Man Alive.  I dare anyone out there to produce evidence of wasting as many hours doing anything as superfluous as shutters and hinges that don't work (Casement windows; can't really have shutters that open from the outside.) Can I get an amen?

Spring Breaking

One of the most sure and fun signs that Spring is right around the corner is brand new baby lambs! The other sure sign is that Herself actually went outside! She's usually in the midst of self-imposed indoor quarantine.  I'm sure glad to see both new lambs and Herself.