Sausage and Cheese

A while back I said I'd post pictures when Brian made more mozarella. Well, I didn't get any pictures of the second batch, but he made batch number three at the end of April. In the same weekend he also made andouille sausage and bratwurst. Here's a look at some of the delicious-ness.

Heating the milk, culture, and rennet.

Testing the firmness of the curd...it's ready!

Video of cutting the curd

Beauty! Curds and whey.

Curds in whey after being heated, now they are ready to be stretched.

Video of stretching the curd

Almost finished

The final product, fresh mozarella. While it was chilling in the refrigerator, the andouille sausage was being smoked.

This is the andouille after smoking. Delicious. I am completely spoiled on homemade sausage.

Perfect with a nice cracker.

Once the andouille was out of the smoker, it was the mozarella's turn.

Here's the final product; can't get over the gorgeous orange rind that smoking produced.

The final product - delicious!

I love cured meat!

The first ham is now in its final stage - aging. Can't wait to try it. For now it is in the basement, but Brian is working on a temperature and humidity controlled box that it will go into soon.

I was inspired by St. Patrick's day last week and corned some venison roasts we'd had in the freezer. We are going to eat some in the corned form with cabbage, hopefully tomorrow. The other half is already gone. Saturday we took it out of the corning brine, added a dry rub, and then smoked it to make pastrami. Oh my goodness, you can not believe how incredible this was. We ate it with mashed potatoes and string beans, and that was good. But, spread a little coarse mustard on a thin slice, add some pickled string beans, and roll up for an out of this world appetizer. We will definitely be doing this again!

Lambing season has officially begun

Lambing season kicked off Sunday with 311, who had a nice set of twins, both boys. When I went to feed in the morning, I found 311 in labor. So I prepared her lambing jug - a cozy little pen piled high with straw and outfitted with a hay bag and water bucket where the ewe and her lambs can bond and we can access everyone easily if there are any problems - fed everyone else, and waited for her to deliver the lambs. Both arrived with no problems (yay!). As it turns out, it will be easy to remember who the oldest lamb is this year. Because of the way we number lambs, these guys will be numbers 1111-1 and 1111-2 (eleven for the year, eleven for the dam, and -1 meaning ram-lamb 1 and 2). No way I'll forget who was first!

When we got back from church I took the camera out and got a few photos of the newbies.

Mama ewes are very protective, and she wasn't thrilled about me sticking my camera in her safe little world.

Lots of licking and nuzzling to get these little guys cleaned off, on their feet, and nursing.

A job well done! This ewe is a great mama, so no surprise there. It is hard to get cute photos of lambs this early, but they are out of the jug and into the mixing pen now, so I'll have lots of cute poses to pick from in the next few days.

As is often the case, there wasn't much of a lull in the lambing. Last night while I was filling up the water trough I noticed a ewe "nesting," which is one of the earliest signs she is getting really close to lambing. Only one problem - she wasn't in our close up pen; she was out in the main field. I have been down that road and I know that it is no fun to try to catch a ewe when she has an acre to run around, trees to duck behind, and numerous obstacles she can put between you and her (oh and none of this is on flat ground either). So we've been using a small pen where we can easily observe the ewes that are closest to lambing and relativley easily catch those that need assistance. This ewe was not in the right place, and we didn't have any luck trying to get her there. So we went inside and made supper. Lambing season is a delicate balance of waiting and interveneing quickly, but only when needed.

We went back out a couple of hours later and she was lying quietly with one lamb that was making pitiful cries and another tiny one that didn't make it. This ewe was 11 days early, and both lambs were small. The largest one weighed just over 5 pounds and the other was about 4. We got them all up to the barn, and placed them in a jug. I worked with the lamb to get it some colostrum. He had good suckling strength, but his back legs weren't very strong so he had quite a bit of trouble staying upright. Once he'd had colostrum and a dose of a mineral and energy drink, we tucked them in and went to sleep. I prayed he'd still be alive come morning. Thankfully, he was! I've been helping him nurse and he's much stronger today, but still not super-steady on his feet.

There was also a brand new set of twins this morning out of our new ram Dalton. Both are good sized and have the cutest speckles. Last I checked they and their mama are doing well. So that's 6 lambs born already, and the first due date is officially tomorrow...

Sunday was a gorgeous, spring-like day with beautiful clear blue skies and temperatures in the 60s. Several of my daffodils are blooming now, and with a break in the rain, I finally got some cheery photos.

Seed starting is also progressing. Friday night I transferred the broccoli and cabbage seedlings to the second stage of my system, little cups made of newspaper. They are so green and healthy, and are off to a great start.

Broccoli, looking up into the lights.

Cabbage seedlings.

Black eyed susan seedlings - lots of sprouts. I'm not sure how I will separate these when it comes time to put them in the newspaper pots...I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

Cherry Brandy rudbeckia seedlings - I am very pleased with how many of these sprouted.

The ham project is on-going. Finally they are fully cured and ready to be smoked. Yesterday they both went in the cold smoker, only they were so heavy the dowel rod broke. Brian took one out and we are currently smoking it. Between tending the hickory chips and checking on lambs, we're keeping busy!

Smokin'

I love that Eric Church song, Smoke a Little Smoke (or as my adorable nephew Eric sings, 'moke a little 'moke). But we're not in to that kind of smoking. This is the kind of smoking we do here...

Over the weekend, Brian and Matt built a cold smoking contraption. The first use for it will be cold smoking the hams that are currently finishing the cure phase.

Cold smoking is used to flavor and preserve the meat, not to cook it. So there is a heat source that burns the wood to produce smoke (this all happens in the red part of our contraption), then that smoke is piped to another chamber (fancy word for trash can). The long pipe allows the smoke to cool, and it is less than 90 degrees by the time it enters the cold smoking chamber where the meat is hanging.

64 degrees inside the cold smoking chamber. Convection currents cause the smoke to rise up out of the chimney cap.

Smokin'

Brian has wanted a smoker for a long time. A few years ago we got a cheap electric model that didn't work out at all, primarily because there was no way to regulate the temperature. We have a friend who built an awesome smokehouse, so for a while there was talk of us building something too. But that never happened.

Instead we invested in a larger, thermostatically controlled smoker. It requires very little human attention during the smoking process and uses a surprisingly small amount of wood. We tested it out over the last week by smoking some paprika and jalapeno peppers and a whole chicken. So far it's all good. Next big smoked project will be bacon! Mmm...bacon.

Jalapenos before smoking

Paprika supremes after smoking