Bacon, Prosciutto and home made snags

As soon as you feel sad to see the pigs you have raised free range from 6 weeks of age head for the abattoir, the meat arrives and the rewards of the 6 months of rearing is felt. Yesterday we picked up the meat from 2 of the 3 pigs and spent the evening preparing a leg for prosciutto, the belly and loin for bacon and shoulder minced with some added backfat to prepare some sausages.

I have adopted the preserving rules that are set out by the well known Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall of River Cottage fame. The preservation of the bacon goes something like this.

Bacon
- 2kg of salt
- 1/2 kg of brown sugar
- bay leaves crushed up
- lightly crushed juniper berries (20 or so)
- cracked peppercorns

The above is all mixed and rubbed into the bacon. The bacon is left in this mixture in a box and each morning and night the liquid that is drawn out is drained and the bacon is left on its otherside. This is done for 3 or 4 days. The salt is all washed off and then the bacon is hung covered in muslin to dry for no less than 4 days. If the bacon is left in the salt for longer than 4 days, the bacon can be a little too salty for a rasher, but this can be rectified by placing the rashers for breakfast in water when you get out of bed and this will extract some salt before cooking. I highly recommend River Cottage DVD called Pig in a day for people interested in curing pork or making snags. The flavour of the bacon is fantastic and not tainted by the nitrates pumped into bacon these days.

The sausage making is a real delight. I have learnt there is a real art to this, but a little practice and you do get the hang of it. And I highly recommend you fry up a little of your mixture before making a sausage to taste you have the mix right. One of our sausages is a paprika style snag and I am really looking forward to eating these. If you have the money, a quality machine is worthwhile. Our sausage maker is a little basic and slower, but it achieves the same result (however we were still making sausages close to midnight!!!). We also use natural beef intestine for the casing.

The prosciutto is simply buried in a lot of salt (25 kgs). It is left in the salt for 3 days per kg of weight with a day taken of. so about 23 days for my leg. It is then hung for around 9 months. This is a long term project and the first time we have tried this so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

Oh, and we had the first roast pork for dinner. And it was delicious. I think I could almost taste apple in the meat as they were feed a large quantity of apples for breakfast.

The sausage maker

The final snags which hang over night to dry off before freezing

Goodbye Porkers

Today I said farewell to Pancetta, Loin and Harry, my three pigs. This was the second time I have raised porkers from weaners and this time the effort to move them to Cradoc Hill  abattoir was simple. Thanks to a friend who has an excellent trailer set up, after a few minutes of looking at their favourite apples in the trailer, they slowly walked on in and started munching. The gate was then shut for the short drive to their destination. I still found it a little emotional this second time round as I lead them to their quarters for the night, but at least they have lived a good life. Nothing like those poor things that live their life on concrete  where they are unable to run around and frolick about.

The porkers a month ago.

Pigs bring a great deal of personality to your small holding. You do need to have some good strong fencing and if not some quality electrical fencing. When they get to 50kgs, their incessant need to rub and scratch can do some serious damage to infrastructure. I put some effort into building my fencing and have got through raising two lots without the need for electrical fencing, however next time round I will use a solar electrical system as the fencing is slowly weakening.

They say pigs have the intelligence of a 3 year old which I would agree with. For their water source, I salvaged an old laundry tub and put it into the ground. It still had the old plug which the porkers learnt to pull out. After frustration, the plug was removed and water repellent glue was put in to ensure they did not drain their water source.

A good wallow is also required. I dug some holes which the porkers widened, however I will need to widen and deepen this wallow next time round as on hot days it dried out quickly and I had to keep turning the hose on to replenish.

Whilst death is never fun, like tax it is a necessity if you want to raise your own meat source.

Farewell to Pancetta, Loin and Harry.

some sausages and pepperoni made from the first lots of pigs.

Hottest day in how long?

Unless I misheard, I think they said on the news tonight that Hobart had it's hottest day in over a century?? The temps soared to a max of 40.6 Celsius today with it 29.9 at 9pm. This is extraordinarily hot for Tasmania.

I had prepped this morning with a soil soaking hose in the veg patch, and everything pulled up quite well. There was heat stress on the curcubits, and the corn leaves were rolling a bit. The spuds showed the biggest sign of stress but they pulled through two high 30 degree days last year so they should be fine.

The pigs and chooks did not enjoy the heat. I kept popping out to the pig pen to add water to their wallow and to hose them down. The poor things do not take well to the heat.

As I have a weather station and the Grove BOM station is not the best for comparison I plan to give the monthly averages as time goes by. This will obviously only be of interest to locals. The December averages were as follows:

                   Dec 2012               Dec 2011
Min Avg         9.2                              8.9
Max  Avg       22.2                           22.1

Rainfall:        38.4mm

The porkers did not take well to the heat.

Heat stress on the spuds

What is this blog stuff

After reading other blogs for years it occurred to me today that. why not do my own. If not for others, then to refer back to my own posts in the future. These blogs will be predominately about vegetable gardening in Southern Tasmania. We reside on the edge of Cygnet and Cradoc with views of Franklin over the Huon River to the North West. Our soils are made up of Permian mudstone, which in winter is often water logged and in summer dry to a concrete like top. The high clay content of the soil also made vegetable growing a challenge to begin with, however these soils, once the organic content is raised, are quite fertile and holds water well.

We have been living at this location for about 18 months and so far I have set up the veg patch, two chook runs and a pig pen. Over the next few months I hope to post many thoughts on things I have done whether chook, vegetable/fruit or pig related or anything else actually. I enjoy reading other peoples blogs and believe the more of us that put experiences down the more we can learn from each other.

Tomato. 

Since moving from Toowoomba, Qld, I too have caught this strange Tomato growing addiction. Tasmania is not too bad for growing Tomatoes considering the cooler average Summer temps it receives. It is probably this marginal climate for Tomato that creates the addiction. Who will have the first ripened Tomato? will the summer be a cool cloudy wet one?, what varieties have you planted? There are many variables to consider when setting up each seasons Tomato crop. Once thing I have really learned since moving here is to give some thought to the variety you plant. When we first moved here we had no summer (2010/11summer). Many days did not get much over 20 it seemed and I heard many say their tomatoes have not ripened still in March. This was at a time I was experiencing some good harvests. It was by coincidence not skill that I had a good harvest. Through a lady I was working with at the time I bought the variety "kotlas" and "taxi" Tomato and these did very well at the place we were renting near Huonville.

When we bought our place, it was May 2011. There was minimal infrastructure, no fencing, no vegetable patch, nothing. There was an area that must have once grown a few things judging by the spuds coming up along with the infestation of hemlock (Conium maculatum). This area was not far from the house and on the slope so i figured i would pick this area, fence it off amateur style,  stick up a floppy top to stop the possums and get a rotary hoe to turn over the grass and soil. Initially I dug over a few patches by hand to get the garlic and potato onions in but the higher clay content made me get the rotary hoe in quick smart. However all this gave me time to consider my Tomato plantings.

At the time of writing it is Dec 28 2012. The varieties of Tomato I am trying this year are as follows. Most are germinated from seed during August:

1. Kotlas
2. Riesenstraube
3. Gold Nugget
4. Legend
5. Hill Billy (sourced from the Garden Pantry - Kate)
6. Mortgage Lifter
7. Mamma Mia (sourced from Mitre 10 as seedlings)
8. Rouge de Marmande
9. Break O'Day  
10. Roma

I had germinated some Siletz and Oregon Springs also which proved successful the previous year, however I had not put a hothouse up yet until late September and left the young seedlings in the hot sun and they were no more.

Kotlas fruit

At the moment the race seems to be between Kotlas (photo above) and Legend for the first ripe tomato, however my money is on kotlas as they are smaller. Steve Solomon sings the praise of Legend, which I must admit were very tasty but not as early (first picked march 3rd last summer) as I had expected. However this may be due to some issues in raising from seed that year.  The Riesenstraube have grown furiously and look like they will produce a bumper crop of cherry tomato. I normally grow tommy toe but opted to try Riesenstraube this year.

Legend fruiting

Last year we grew 4 plants of Gold Nugget which produced a huge quantity of yellow cherry toms, however we did not really enjoy the flavour all that much so I opted for just the 1 this year for pizza. I also started off with Money Maker seedlings however learnt another lesson in hardening off.

Late October 2012 I planted out the Tomato seedlings with stakes and tree protection cover to give warmth from coolish nights and the possible late frost. Instead we had a really hot day while I was at work and it seems the money maker did not survive this sudden heat. That is what I put it down to anyway. The others survived ok.

The current growing season seems to be going nicely. We had a warmer November 2012 than the previous year which seems to have got things growing nicely. The wireless weather station I have showed the following:
                                                         Avg  Nov 2012
                                          Min                 7.7  Celsius
                                          Max               22.2 Celsius
                                          Rain               44.5mm

The determinate tomato (bush type)

  

This photo shows 4 capsicum (Antohi) - bottom 4, 2 chili (early jalapeno) and 2 watermelon (top)

Being the first post there feels like there is so much to write down. Next post I might look at the pumpkins i am growing this year plus a few others.

Dave

The indeterminate tomatoes (large vines) - I train 4 to 6 main stems up the stakes and pinch off laterals to focus energy into the fruit for ripening.