Snow,ice,ice,snow.

Yep, that seems to be the pattern at the moment. Snow and ice dominate pretty much all of our outdoor tasks. Whether it's opening the barn doors, watering the animals, walking to the garage, or driving down the drive, conditions underfoot (or sometimes overfoot and over the knee too!) are a time-consuming and challenging occupation. It took three tries to get up the hill yesterday, because I was silly enough to stop at the bottom to pick up Cam from the school bus. Smashing ice in buckets and chicken drinkers is part of the daily routine. Skidding up and down the drive with buckets of gravel can be fun. And, hey, taking the occasional kettle of boiling water out to defrost a stuck door isn't such a big deal! The cold fresh air still makes me feel alive, and the animals hardly seem to notice.

Still, despite all the above, I must confess I do find my thoughts turn to spring occasionally. And I find myself fantasizing about wearing fewer clothes, eating fresh tomatoes from the garden and not tip-toeing gingerly about like a granny. Even the horrors of the blackfly seem to blur when I think of walking bearfoot over the grass....

But hey, our wonderful community rink will be gone in the summer, and sledging down the hill will not be an option. And there's something about those mornings when the snow glitters like, well, like glitter, and the ice makes beautiful big leafy patterns on the porch windows.

Maybe my biggest revelation about our move to Canada has been just how much I love the seasons...

When does spring start?

Trouble in Porky Packages

Berkshire Weaners - February 2009
Originally uploaded by rubhadubh

Kilbrannan Farm expanded it's livestock and culinary potential this morning when we drove over to New Ross to pick up our two Berkshire weaners.

Ross Farm, I have mentioned it before, is a great place - a heritage farm museum. Not a dry boring museum though, they really 'walk the walk'! Their Berkshire sows and gigantic boar produce piglets which are then sold to those in the know. Those in the know, know that these heritage breed pigs produce outstanding pork and bacon, a world away from bland commercial porkery.

There's still a deal of snow around and -15, so we have them in the barn with a heat lamp for the time being. They have made themselves a nest and are currently sleeping off the excitement of the day.

Once it fairs up we'll have them out on pasture, scoffing all the garden offcuts, and that should turn them into prime pieces of porkdom. In the meantime, we'll scritch them behind the ears and try to make them happy meat!

Woohoo - Cam Rocks!

So Cameron came home from school earlier in the week saying he'd been asked to take part in a Variety Show in the school gym tonight, on behalf of the North Queens Junior Girls Basketball Team. Fair enough, so we encouraged him to put a drum solo routine together with, oh, at least a few days to practice.

We went along to set his drums up this afternoon. Only a couple of the performers were school kids, the others were adults, and you could see his confidence slipping as they mostly ignored the wee 10 year old with the drum kit. Well, maybe that's no bad thing as he won't always be the centre of the show... Anyway, he didn't do much practising just tapped timidly in the background whilst they twiddled away.

Come the show, again, he didn't miss a beat but played very quietly almost to the point of invisibility until the intermission. At the interval we spoke to him and he said that he had decided not to play solo. We encouraged but didn't push him. Back to the second half... and no Cam on stage. Jane went to see if he was ok and he was, but none of the adults had invited him back.

Well, we like a bit of country as much as the next Canadian immigrant, but to be honest, there's a limit. The guys playing were ok, but the sound was crap and after straining to hear the 50th song about Mom drinking meths, Daddies lurv, dog leaving on jet plane, boyfriend being called Sue or whatever, people were starting to filter out. Problem was, Cam's drum kit was on stage, so we couldn't go anywhere, but we'd decided to put the evening down to experience at least. For the last couple of tunes Cam came back on.

The M.C. had asked him to do a drum roll to introduce each of the basketball team, so when the other musicians left the stage, Cam stayed. Then Carl, the M.C. said "So Cam, show us what ya got..." - a momentary blank look followed by fleeting panic, we held our breath; what would he do...

Hurhurhur, what he did was shrug - and played a belter! Man, he just blew them away, the place went wild, and he bloody taught them not to underestimate a young lad! The thing is, he is getting pretty damn good on drums and folks were probably thinking he'd done well enough with what he had played - so it was totally unexpected. But he is playing with style and grace and groove, and my heart soared.

As Jane said, this is the sort of thing you want for your kids - the little successes, the tests and triumphs, at least enough of them to balance out the inevitable knocks and defeats. And it won't hurt his cool rating, and the chance to date the better looking girls either.

Of course, because we are crap parents, we had (again) forgotten to take a camera. Thankfully, there was a proper parent in the audience, so hopefully I'll be able to post a photo soon.

Phew! I need a rum... and the skating rink opens tomorrow, so I'd better not be late, but that's a different story. This is Rock and Roll Radio, stay tuned for more Rock and Roll...

Oh aye, and a happy New Year to everyone!

Have a Cool Yule, Y'all

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.