Going whole hog

Our hog is back from the butcher. We didn't have this hog on our farm, but he was still our hog. He was born and raised at a local organic farm, the same farm from where we get our milk. I saw him as a wee pink piggy, a few days after birth, on a cold winter day. I saw him grow quickly in the springtime, frolicking outside in the mud with his brothers and sisters. I saw him become a young adult over the summer, grubbing his nose into the ground and rubbing his backside against the trees for a good scratch.

We had to buy a new freezer for this hog, since our other two freezers are mostly full. (More evidence of that looniness I mentioned in an earlier post.) So you can see here how much meat a butchered hog can give you. The top shelf is lard that I will render on a cold snowy day this winter. The second shelf is pork chops, brats and breakfast sausage. The third shelf is fresh roasts and hams. The bottom bin is bacon and ground pork. The door holds spare ribs, hocks, soup bones and liver.

I love cooking a fresh pork shoulder roast in the crockpot with sauerkraut and caraway seeds. And serving it with mashed potatoes, loaded with butter. So very very tasty.

A peeling

One bushel down, one to go. We did more canned and dried apples this evening, twelve quarts of canned and four quarts of dried. I'll try to do applesauce on Monday. If the weather warms a bit we can go out and pick more apples for cider. Doesn't homemade apple cider sound appealing right about now?

But the next ten days will be extraordinarily busy with meetings and seminars for work, plus my sister's wedding. I really hope the temps warm up a bit for the latter half of October, for we've tons of autumn tasks yet to finish. Cleaning out the chicken coop and goat barn in sub-zero weather is no fun.

Fun while it lasted

The boys helped me pull the remaining pumpkins and rutabagas out of the garden this afternoon. I also hacked off two Brussels Sprout stems and brought them in. We had some with dinner, and they were oh so good. In fact, both Graham and Benjimouse had third helpings. Owen, however, choked down his obligatory three sprouts and declined my offer of more.

Remember the first frost we had on September 29th? Well, here it is ten days later and what is it doing outside right now?


That's right. We have about an inch on the ground already. So much for autumn. It was fun while it lasted.

Picking apples

On Wednesday we went out and picked about two bushels of apples from a friend's orchard. Our newly bought apple picker helped tremendously. Right now a batch is in the dehydrator and another batch is getting ready for the canner. Tomorrow I'll do a vat of applesauce. I'll probably put some unbruised apples in my root cellar just to see how long they will last in storage. And if we have enough left over, maybe we'll try our hand at some cider.

Last winter I accidentally left a half-full jar of applesauce on the counter for a few days and ended up with some pretty potent applejack. Just smelling it brought stars to my brain. Hubby refused to taste it so it ended up in the bin. Fermentation is a strange and wonderful thing.