winter work

In spring we prepare and plant; we grow our garden throughout the summer; and spend the fall harvesting and preserving. Winter is for hunting and processing meat. We are in the midst of grinding and mixing venison and pork to stuff into *natural* sausage casings and bags. We stuffed 25 pounds of breakfast sausage and 25 pounds of Polish sausage yesterday. This evening we bagged 24 pounds of Italian sausage (and cooked up one pound in a delicious spaghetti sauce for dinner). Tonight we have some help coming to make potato sausage, which is venison, pork, hash brown potatoes and diced onions in a ratio that doesn't seem to match any of the "potato sausage" recipes that I googled, but we like it!

Still to go, we have summer sausage and snack sticks to make and to smoke in the smoker Adam built out of a stainless steel warming cabinet (that was to be discarded at the hospital) and a really old electric stove (free from a thrift store). I haven't blogged about that, but need to add some pictures because it is a work of art.