Friday roundup

Today is May 1 -- happy May Day!

As I mentioned last week, I'm starting a new end-of-week tradition called Friday Roundup, in which we chip in all the preparedness-related things we did during the week. As spring gains momentum, outside work will take precedence.

So without further ado, here's what our week entailed:

• Between working on tankard orders, Don totally removed a trashed gate and fence section into our pasture...

...and replaced it with a stout gate and new (salvaged) fencing.

• On Monday we butchered three animals. The meat should be back in about two weeks.

• On Tuesday I began milking Polly again (twice a day) since we butchered her yearling steer Chuck. She was a little rough in the milking stall at first -- it's been a long time since I've milked her -- but she soon settled in. Her teats were sore and chapped from Chuck's sharp teeth, so I'm putting bag balm on her teats after every milking, which she seems to like. She's giving about 1.5 gallons a day, which is quite decent considering how late in her lactation cycle she is.

• Canned 18 pints of pintos beans.

• Hauled about 40 lbs. of miscellaneous bacon ends which had collected in the freezer. I defrosted them, and over two days cut and fried them down, then rebagged and froze the cooked bacon bits.

• We received a shipment of 24 new blueberry bushes from a nursery. We'll be preparing new beds for them this weekend.

• We drilled holes and inserted poles to enclose about a half-acre adjacent to the garden (which includes the pond). This will be used to plant an orchard and expand the garden a bit more. The poles aren't concreted in yet; we'll get to that over the next week.

What's everyone else's Friday roundup?

A picture is worth a thousand tasks

Consider this photo:

This photo was taken about 9 pm and represents the conclusion of a thousand tasks that occupied our day.

First, the dishes are done. Third time today.

Second, those are a bunch of tankards on the counter we're just about to card and pack for a shipment going out tomorrow. Don's been working on these all week long.

Third, that's 18 pints of canned pinto beans on the right. I soaked them overnight, simmered them for a few hours this morning, and canned them this afternoon.

Fourth, those two white upended buckets on top the jars of beans are cleaned milk buckets, because I'm milking Polly again. This is because we butchered three animals on Monday, including Polly's yearling steer calf Chuck. We castrated Chuck when he was a few days old, but apparently we didn't get "everything." He suddenly started acting like a bull. The last thing we need is another bull around the place, so when we called the butchers to dispatch two other animals, we threw Chuck in there as well. However now Polly needs to be milked twice a day, so I'm back at it.

Fifth, the pot on the stove is frying down bacon bits. I had accumulated a lot of el-cheapo bacon ends in the chest freezer. With the meat due back from the butchers in a couple of weeks, plus the fact that we now have a smaller chest freezer, space is at a premium and I need to clean it out as much as possible. I've been meaning to can up bacon bits anyway, but it takes a long time to fry everything down and drain off the fat. That pot on the stove is the third batch I've fried down today.

Bottom line: the photo above represents a LOT of work. Don and I are both wiped. I'm off to bed. Good night.

Canning bacon bits

I've been canning a lot lately. Not only is it the season of abundance, but I feel a sense of urgency to get my pantry as full as it can possibly be. In fact, I've been canning so much that I'm getting dangerously low on jars. While I have a sufficient quantity of quart jars, I'm down to only three dozen pint jars.

Nonetheless when I came across three-pound packs of bacon ends for a good price, I cleaned out the store. We'd just finished using up our stash of bacon bits I'd canned last year, and bacon bits are excellent in so many dishes that having a nice supply is a bonus.

Besides, with the horrible drought plaguing the midwest, pork prices are on the rise. Best to can bacon bits while I can still afford it.

Cutting up the bacon ends.

I wished I'd stopped to count how many three-pound packages I started with, but I forgot to. I cup up and cooked the bacon ends over a period of days, so I lost track. But it was lots of bacon ends.

Two packages (six pounds) of bacon ends filled up my pot.

Then I cooked it down. This took a long time -- again, I did it over a period of days -- because I prefer to cook it slowly.

I drained it about half-way through, and of course drained it when it was completely cooked.

When all the bacon was cooked down, I started canning. I re-heated the bacon bits, then filled pint jars dry (meaning, I added no other liquid).

Scalding lids and rings.

I came away with a total of 18 pints of bacon bits.

All meat gets canned in a pressure canner, 75 minutes for pints or 90 minutes for quarts.

Because of our elevation, I keep the pressure between 12 and 13 lbs.

Because I like having lots of bacon bits in the pantry, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for additional bacon ends on sale. The more the merrier!

Old-fashioned grinder

Last year at a local antique store, we purchased a weird-looking meat grinder thingy. It's made of cast iron and very heavy.



At the time we got it, it was rusty, and since we'd never used it, it stayed rusty. But during hunting season last year, a neighbor (who bagged his deer) called and asked if we had a grinder he could borrow. We warned him our antique was rusty and may not work well, but he took it anyway... and then wire-wheeled it and cleaned it up beautifully, ground up his meat, and returned it in far better condition than we got it. (That's a good neighbor.)



Anyway this week we ran out of the bacon bits I'd canned up earlier. So I purchased several packs of bacon ends to cut up, fry down, and can.

It's the cutting up part that's a pain. So -- why not try the grinder?



We quickly discovered a couple of things. One, if we're going to use this grinder on a regular basis, we'll have to mount it on something. Trying to crank it while holding it down was tough.

Two, the blades are dull. No surprise, considering its age. Make a note, sharpen the blades.

Three, don't overstuff. The more meat being processed through, the harder it is to crank. Feeding it at a moderate pace works better.



But it worked just great!



(Note Lydia's intense interest in this procedure.)




The meat was ground so fine I wasn't sure how it would fry up into bacon bits. So we ground just one package and tried frying it up first.




It fried up just beautifully...



...so we went ahead and ground up the rest of the meat. Here are some neighbor kids joining in the fun. Many hands make light work!



When all the meat was ground, I opened the grinder to remove the stuff still caught in the blades.



It wasn't hard, and only took a few minutes.



Ah, now cleaning it... that was a different story. What a hassle. Make another note, only use the grinder when there's a lot of meat to grind. Otherwise the cleanup procedure isn't worth the effort. Fortunately the blades can all be removed, but it still means that each part must be scrubbed separately.



Cleaned and ready to go for the next time...



Despite the hassle of cleaning (which, frankly, would be inescapable even with a new meat grinder), I'm more than pleased with how this antique performed.

I think it's a valuable thing to start collecting hand tools of assorted varieties, both shop tools and kitchen tools. This antique grinder now has an honored place in our pantry.

Canning bacon bits

I decided to can some more bacon bits to supplement some I already had canned up. So I bought 15 lbs. of bacon ends, in 3-lb. packages.

The girls helped cut it up.

We could only fit half the bacon -- 2 1/2 packages -- in the pot at one time.

Frying it down took awhile since I cook it slow so nothing burns.

In fact, it took so long to cook down both batches that it was too late to can it (or I'd be up past midnight). So I put the cooked bacon bits in the fridge overnight. The next day I re-heated the entire batch so I could hot-pack the bacon into jars.

Filling the jars. I packed them dry, meaning I didn't add any water to the bacon.

Scalding the Tattler lids and gaskets.

Out of 15 lbs of bacon ends, I got 10 pints of cooked bacon bits.

Some people have wondered why I make my own bacon bits rather than buying them. Homemade bacon bits are probably one of the few items I can which are more expensive than store-bought. But the fact is, they taste better.

Since the processing time is the same and since I had room in the canner, I also canned up a pint of leftover beef gravy.

Lids and gaskets out of the hot water.

Lids and rings on.

Into the canner.

Pressure building. These are canned at 12 lbs pressure (at our elevation) for 75 minutes.

Cooling.

We use bacon bits in baked potatoes, salads, and fried rice. Always a handy thing to keep in the pantry!