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!

Lamb Roast

This year I decided to host a "Lamb Roast" by butchering and Rotisserie-ing a large lamb.  I invited nearly everyone I thought would be available and interested in doing something a little experimental. It turned out "Okay", but I did learn some things, some of which I will recount here so that I can remember them.  Here are a few photos:

Here are my helpers.  It went so well, we just impulsively decided to do another one that same morning.

Stitching up onions, garlic and lemons inside the cavity

Setting lamb over grill.

Basting every half hour. 

Finally getting done! 

So, the long and short of it is this; It took a lot longer than I expected.  I am sooooo glad we butchered the second lamb and just tossed him into the smoker, or we would have had a lot of angry, hungry people driving to Burger King.  I sure could have lowered it down on the stands earlier for one thing, and another is I guess I needed more fire in general.  I would say next time I would allow at least 8 hours of cook time for a 120 # live weight animal, and certainly start it out lower.  Even when done, it wasn't very tender, so it could have used a few more hours still.

Catching up

Typically, when I haven't posted for a while, it's not because I haven't been doing anything; it's because I've been busy enough that I haven't been able to write anything.  I think that has been the case here these last few months.  Here is something of a pictorial review of some the activities of 2015 thus far:

Butchered another hog.

Stuffed 100 pounds of rope sausage, including Kielbasa, pepperoni, and German sausage. 

Processing bacon.

Smoked bacon.

I've done a lot of cooking, actually.  Here are three Pork tenderloins that turned out great.

Made a rabbit pie, the hard way.  (shooting the rabbit and making the crust yourself, with your own lard you rendered)
And Yes, I made the Pie, and the crust myself, NOT my wife.

Rabbit pie ingredients (minus the radishes) 

I purchased 4 new sheep.  These are called "Dorpers".  They are a hair sheep, and are a heavy framed meat sheep, specifically bred for meat production.  (As they should be, at my house)  Don't they just look yummy?

Diligently worked on growing facial hair that stuck out further than my nose.

Built most of a milking stanchion.

Grew still more facial hair...

Tore the roof and all the siding off of my house, and replaced all the windows.

Herself and I went to the Pacific side of Mexico; Puerto Vallarta, to celebrate 15 years of marriage.

Selfie in Mexico

On the Pacific ocean boardwalk.

Herself, in Mexico...

Started a Donkey farm. (not really; they are just "Loaner-Donkeys.")

Nearly got my Grandad's '49 KB-5 IH truck restored.

Had new baby twin lambs!!! Yay! Just 2 days ago.

Not pictured here are two more heifers that I bought... maybe pictures later.  Did I mention that Herself thinks I'm a little "over the top" on some of my hobbies?

Hog butchering

The weekend before last our friends, the Falls and us Fosters butchered 2 hogs. We were going to three, but we quickly realized that we could only manage two of them because they were so monstrously large. I had just procrastinated butchering, because I just so badly didn't want to do it in the heat. So I just kept feeding them and kept feeding them. Most people butcher at the 225 to 250 pound range,  but we couldn't weigh the first one because my scales only go up to 400 pounds! We skinned and gutted him,  and if I remember correctly, then he weighed 390! What a beast! I didn't weigh anything else, but I just smoked the bacon Saturday after brining them for a week, and I had just under 40 pounds of bacon (pre-smoked).

Here are a few pictures of our fun. 

We skinned the first one, then scraped the second.

This is one mammoth Pork Chop, the "rind" still on. 

Pork-Belly, after it had brined for a week.

All chopped up, ready to smoke.

Bacon, in the smoker.

Sliced Bacon! Ready to cook.

Butcher day

Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, was this little piggy's butcher day.  This was the first time that I have slaughtered a hog with the intention of butchering it.  I did it twice last year, with pigs half this one's size, and just cooked the whole hog. This year, even my smoker trailer couldn't have accommodated this whole hog; it weighed in at 340 pounds!!!  That is around a third larger than the average butcher weight of 225.  He was remarkably not very fatty; he was in great shape from spending most of his life with plenty of room to run around.  I had friend James Alongi along to help, and good thing, too.  Jason Nather also swung by to chat and wound up elbow deep in pig blood; he couldn't help himself from jumping in.

Below is the carcass, ready to be reduced into primal cuts.

One side of pork belly:

I know this is a funny picture; but I included it, because it is me illustrating out loud how stinking heavy just one of  these hams were.  It was nearly everything I had to haul it across the room.

My kiddos, on the job! Pulling all the little scraps off the bones for the "grind."

Bacons and Hams brining away in the fridge, getting ready for the smoker next week.

We did something different this year, Wifey even got on board with it.  We rendered lard!  The by-productof making lard is cracklings, which I ordinarily love, but I didn't feel so great when I woke up this morning, so when I walked into the butcher room to check on them; I about lost my cookies.  The smell of the fat rendering overnight in a little room was a little overpowering for someone who is sick.

And of course, the lard, gelling nicely.  

Anyway, this proved to be a bit more difficult than I expected, but in a sense, I expected that, and didn't care.  I know I get in over my head on most of my projects, but I usually find my way out of them okay...

cute chicks!!

Speaking of meat, here are yesterday's new arrivals. (03/23/11, it helps me remember when to butcher)
Its not all I think about, but, you know. And its something that Wifey and I like to do together, which there are not that many things that we share creative interest in. Thinking about food is one of them- butchering food is not.
The one little chick closest to the bottom looked sick, so I gave him a poke. He woke abruptly and said: "CHEEP!!, CHEEP-CHEEP!!!" Apparently, he was only sleeping, but the girls just thought it was hilarious; just a little bit ago, I heard them in their beds saying"CHEEP!!, CHEEP-CHEEP!!!" Then giggles all around....