Bacon!

Wow. I don't really know why, perhaps because we were so disappointed with the bacon made for us last year, but I didn't expect the bacon to come out actually tasting like bacon.

Last year, a friend said he would brine and smoke some streaky bacon for us from the pig that we had bought, he was doing his own and had a smoker etc. so we left him to it. Not sure what wood he used, whether it was sawdust made with a chainsaw, or softwood, or just too long in the smoker? But it was a disappointment.

So we made our own this time. I dry cured it for about 3.5 days in salt, with peppercorns, brown sugar and crushed bay leaves. 2.5 days would probably have been enough, because we wanted to create a breakfast rasher rather than a preserved pancetta. After curing, it was rinsed and hung up to dry for a few days. In the meantime, I realised that I needed to build a smoker!

There are lots of plans and pictures of smoker designs on t'internet - not so many for cold smokers, but the general principle is that you have a smoke source and a smoky box and separate the two using pipe, so that the smoke has a chance to cool down before reaching the smokee. I had a wee charcoal bbq lying around (fairly redundant after Donal and Nicola bought us a propane one!) and once I worked out how to stick a big tin can on to the lid as a chimney, that was the smoke source sorted. You can get away with cardboard box as a smokehouse, but we splashed out a few dollars for a galvanised garbage can, drilled some holes in the lid, other holes in the side to put rods through, and bolts for suspending a rack and a larger hole to put the pipe in.



The wonderful hardware store in the village, N. F. Douglas & Sons had all the bits, including some flexible hose. It's like tumble dryer hose, but made of a sort of foil, so seems to be heat resistant. Looks like something off a '50s sci-fi B-movie (Plan 9 from Outer Space - anyone seen it?) :-)

Don Kimball, a local furniture maker had given us bags of maple shaving, primarily for animal bedding, and I went and picked up some apple tree branches that we had pruned in early Spring. Using a sharp axe I could make thin shavings and after getting a bed of hot coals from some seasoned oak wood, I put a mixture of apple with a wee bit of dampened maple on top, put on the lid and we were in business.

Half the bacon I sliced unsmoked and the other half went into the smoker for just a few hours. The result is outstandingly good! It really is. The transformation from simple pork to sweet, salty, savoury bacon is only just short of miraculous!

So much so, that we have ordered 2 Berkshire piglets from Ross Farm for delivery around mid-February!

Ou est le Grand Saucisson de la Maison?

Il est ici...!



We finally got around to butchering a pig! Well, half a pig - 103lb though. With the help of Hugh and Ray's 'Pig in a Day', we tackled it and to be honest, it was pretty straightforward. I actually found taking the meat off the hand (front leg), was the trickiest bit.



We took off the hind leg, and divided it into a full ham, and a corner gammon - both went into a cider cure...



Then we divided the loin from the belly. We took the tenderloin off, then took some chops from the chump end. The rest, I boned the ribs out of, rolled and tied into a neat loin roast, which we cut in two (skin on, scored, for crackling), and saved the rack of ribs.

There is a small roast to be had from the first 4 ribs of the belly piece, on the bone, leaving the rest of the 'thin end' of belly to be dry cured for streaky bacon. Salt, cracked black pepper, soft brown sugar and shredded bay leaves makes the cure. To be rubbed in daily for three days or so.

That left the shoulder and hand. I boned out the blade bone for a shoulder roast and the rest went into the box for sausage meat, along with trimmings from all sorts of elsewhere.

I ha'ed ma doots that the hand mincer/stuffer was going to do it, but do it it did, do it, it did, indeed, aye. Jane, Cam and I (Breagh is above such peasant pleasures) took a batch of sausage meat each; Cam's was a fairly plain breakfast banger, mace and white pepper and not much else, Jane's was a supper banger with sage, thyme (both from the garden :-) and black pepper, and mine was an evening of debauchery banger with paprika, chili and garlic. They have come out better than I imagined they might, fan-bleeding-tastic.

Odd ways to spend a weekend, pt.993

Odd ways to spend a weekend really. "Hey Bud! How was the weekend?", "Well, first I sawed a pigs head into bits and then I helped make a skating rink..."


Pig Processing pt.1
-------------------
We arranged to buy half a pig from friends of ours who raise a few each year for slaughter and sale. Last year we helped with the slaughter (on Jane's birthday!) but had the butchery done by a local aquaintance. This year we didn't have time to go to the slaughtering, but have said that we would cut it up ourselves. That process started with going a collecting all the unwanted pig parts - but it hasn't been terribly successful so far. The children don't like fried liver much, so I made 2 liver pates using our new meat grinder - we'll leave them a couple of days to see if they are any more palatable for fussy children! We saved some kidney for tonight's Steak and Kiddly Pie. Nobody really wanted to eat the hearts (they killed two pigs!), so the leftover liver, hearts and kidneys (the other three), went into a big pan for dog/cat food.

I had them save a couple of litres of blood for making black pudding, but because I wasn't there at time of collection, it didn't get stirred and so ended up as one large unappetising clot - that went on the compost heap instead!

Cam and I spent a fair amount of time and energy yesterday sawing and cutting up, cleaning and brining a whole pigs head, tongue and trotters to make into brawn, but I've just managed to burn the bottom of the stew, ruining the whole thing :-(

So, we're not doing very well so far. We need to go pick up the rest of the carcass in a few days - sausage casings and brine buckets at the ready! I can't afford to waste any more of it though, dammit.

Ach, at least I did manage to successfully, and relatively pain-freely, change the washroom lavatory faucet (that's the bathroom basin taps to those on the East side of the pond). And we made a good go at Georgie's grand plan to turn the riding ring at the Exhibition Grounds into a large skating rink this year by nailing a bottom board around the rails and leveling the surface. It still needs a plastic skirt tacked to it and it will be ready to be flooded when the temperature drops and freeze-up begins.

Snow!

First proper snowstorm of the year has dumped a fair amount on us - and it's still snowing.

We weren't absolutely unprepared, but I hadn't put snowchains or the snow bucket on the tractor, so I spent most of the morning doing that before I could shovel any snow. These things are never as simple as they should be!



Because the ground isn't frozen yet, the drive is a bit of a mess. You can't go too close or else you dig up the gravel, but too high runs the risk of it leaving ridges which can freeze and then you're stuffed until spring. Hopefully though, the forecast is calling for it warming up by Tuesday, so we will maybe get another shot at it.

Autumn Frenzy (Get Set for Winter)

We have managed to tick off quite a number of items on the grand to-do list recently, which is encouraging. Most are related to getting ready for winter in one way or another.

That process started with the canning and preserving of a whole range of late summer produce, from cranberries to sauerkraut joining the array of tomatoes, pickled cukes and chutney. We bought half a cow and that went in the freezer with our table birds. We should have half a pig coming this week to round out our meat store. More of the pig when it happens!

The garden and greenhouse are just about cleared and prepared for winter, the strawberries and asparagus are pruned and mulched. We have some experimental greenery in the tunnel, it'll be interesting to see how it gets on, though with Jane's accident, we didn't really catch up on winter planting, so the experiment will have to wait for another year properly. The one and only apple tree still needs to be pruned, but presumably there isn't any rush to do that now. We still have plans to put in a bit of an orchard next spring. We really wanted to have a new propagation / transplant greenhouse up before next spring - maybe we've missed our chance now, but we might get to it yet.

Last winter's manure was tractored to join this year's cut grass in a large windrow compost heap, and we divided the stable into 2 separate loose boxes for the horses - hopefully they'll be easier to manage singly. I made a start brushcutting the rushes and weedy grass in the lower field, where I didn't mow this year - it's wet and boggy down there at the moment, and I thought I would end up with the tractor stuck, but the longer it lies uncut, the worse the tangle will become. I was hoping to cut it all by hand, so the new growth in the spring would be palatable for grazing. We still need drainage though.

When Neal was here, he managed to stack most of this year's firewood, and I have added to that and made an outdoor stack, covered, which may even do us for next year too. For the first time ever, we are actually ahead of ourselves in firewood. I even felled a couple of small trees to make up the cordage.

In the house, we got the insulation done - we have blown cellulose, recycled newsprint into the attic and coombe spaces, which will hopefully make it a little more bearable upstairs for the kids bedrooms. The upstairs bathroom renovation is coming along, albeit painfully slowly. I have stripped the 'den' behind the bathroom. We did the pre-winter chimney sweep, put away the trampoline and the volleyball net and gathered bags of birchbark and kindling for fire lighting.

After a mixed spell of weather, the temperature has announced winter with a vengeance. There are snow flurries today and it has been below freezing all day. We brought the horses in tonight for the first time, and shifted the new chickens into their winter quarters. The latter process involved a cardboard box and a pokey stick - good grief, are we professionals at this?!

So, are we ready for winter? No, it doesn't feel so, but we have managed to do a bunch of pre-winter tasks and that feels fairly good!

As the dust settles...

Well, it has been a time of it.

The last blog entry was anticipating visitors, and I'm sitting now just an hour after seeing Neal, Madeleine, Jessica and Robin off and contemplating an empty house for the first time in umpteen weeks.

It has been a blast and we have really enjoyed everyone's company, but my last blog couldn't anticipate the fact that in the forthcoming period Jane would spend a week in Intensive Care - just to add an extra level of excitement to an already hectic time.

As most of you probably know, we waved goodbye to Ian and Hilary as they set off to tour the province and left us to get ready for the Queens County Fair at which we were both due to be helping. We had stabled the horses along at the Exhibition Grounds and on that Monday evening, Jane saddled Mocha up to give her a bit of a spin around the riding ring - 5 seconds later she was seriously injured as the horse threw her and accidentally stood on her abdomen for good measure. She was taken 'lights and sirens' to Bridgewater where they scanned her and sent her through to Halifax for emergency surgery fearing that her pancreas, spleen and bowel were damaged.

Yoy, that was a scary night, but by the next morning it was clear that there wasn't any major organ damage at least, and that she wasn't about to peg it! We went through to visit - she had the full range of tubes in and was doped up with morphine, but, as we hoped, out of the woods. That was Tuesday.

My mother brought her flight forward a week and landed on Thursday night. Having her around was fantastic. I'm sure that I would have coped without, but having her here was such a help. The garden was in the midst of harvest and she got stuck right in! Joe flew in a week later and we got Jane home shortly after, albeit with a new 7 inch scar to add to the collection. We were apprehensive as to how my folks would find Nova Scotia and them having to find a new flight with Icelandair plus change plans in light of Jane's accident boded badly for their impression of our new life here. I needn't have worried...

Folks here in Caledonia were just superb. From the first responders on the evening of the accident, to all the people who brought food and cards and gifts, to everyone (some of whom I hadn't met before) who stopped me to ask after Jane and offer help - I thank you all from my heart. You made us feel like we were part of a very caring, inclusive community and after such a short period of time living here it was way more than I, or my folks, expected. You did Nova Scotia, and Canada, proud. All of our visitors have gone away amazed at how friendly and welcoming the people are here, and I'm bloody proud to say I live in Caledonia.

Woo, so Jane missed the Fair entirely, and I was really too busy to lend a hand, but we have managed to limp though harvest, Farmers' Markets and all the rest of it with the help of friends, family and community.

So, I'm sitting waiting for Jane to phone to say she has dropped Neal and Madeleine safely at the airport - she offered to do the driving tonight. I think it's fair to say that they've had a good vacation. Neal did a grand job of getting our winter firewood stacked ready, and we got a new chicken house built. It was great having them around, and they might even come back!

So, as the dust settles on an incredibly busy time, I look back at some of the scariest moments of my life as I honestly felt I might lose Jane, but my over-riding feeling about this period is joy. We have a big circle of friends from all over the place, near and far, family who were there when we needed them, neighbours who were above and beyond neighbourly, and we live on a beautiful farm in a special part of the world. Cool :-)

Stand-out moments: Georgie and Helen's Thanksgiving Dinner in the woods, Cam's 3rd place in the 4H Pro Show for his wooden truck, Breagh's school report at the parent-teacher meetings, getting Jane out of hospital and bringing her home to the farm.

September already

O Tardy Loon, wherefore art thy scribings?

Yeh, well, it's bin busy like. But September? Already? Jings... I was berated by Neal about us not having blogged for a while, and time does, indeed, slip past. I started a deep, serious blog on the first anniversary of our landing in Nova Scotia last month, but haven't finished it yet.



What have we been up to? Lots.

The house is still in chaos and we have visitors arriving soon. I capitulated, and booked contractors to help move the work on. They put a Velux window in the landing and altered the stair line, so you don't bang your head going up stairs, they also stripped out the room which will become the upstairs bathroom. In doing so, we discovered that several room joists don't actually stretch to the outside wall! The only thing holding up the floor, was the floor... sigh. New bathroom bits are ordered and should be here next week.

Talking of visitors, it's a wonder we are having any, as Zoom airlines went bust and severed the link between Glasgow and Halifax. A royal pain for everyone involved, and a rude lesson that you should always pay for flights with a credit card!

The Queens County Farmers' Market has been doing well. Every other Saturday at the Exhibition Grounds in Caledonia, 8:30 - 12 noon. We pretty much sell out, though it doesn't quite provide a living wage, at least not this year. It does encourage us to plan for markets next year though. There are still a few outlets not plugged by Cindy and David's organic megalopolous.



Faced with umpteen cords of firewood to split, I capitulated (again) and hired a logsplitter. That's a wee fellow that comes along out of the backwoods, with his chopper slung over his shoulder. Nah, not really. I got a good deal, as it was a holiday weekend, they only charged me a day and a half rate, and we ploughed our way through the entire pile - woohoo. I've never managed to be so far ahead in firewood before. This thing is great - it's probably no quicker than a maul for easy bits, but for big, knotty logs, it's brilliant! It doesn't split them, so much as brutalise them into pieces. Our friendly local machine shop is going to build one for me, to fit on the BCS tiller...



I finally got a mower and rake for the tractor, though the grass had gone past good hay quality, so we mowed and gathered it into a long windrow where we will mix it with stable muck and woodash and compost it. O heart's dream! A BIG compost heap :-)

What else? Loads, but this is turning into an epic. LaHave Folk Festival was good fun. Cam's drum teacher Jamie Junger was great. Kids are back to school, finally, after a looong summer holiday, Breagh's now in High School, crivens. Meat birds need to go in the freezer before they eat us out of house and home. The buckwheat on the new plot needs turned under and winter rye sown, been waiting for a dry spell to go on it with the tractor - the weather has actually been a bit mixed lately.

Crikey, that'll do...