Hog butchering

We butchered a hog! A very good friend of mine raises hogs, I do not have the space right now. we bought 1/2 hog from her and butchered it a few Sunday's ago. I do not share photos of other individual's property so none of those here, but these are our processing photos.

We brought the meat home in coolers, the man who was helping us taught us a lot and helped us do the big cuts. He let Tad do much of the butchering.

They were cracking up here because I told them not to. Nathalie's outfit is something I will always think was cute and she will someday hate.

Again, letting Tad do much of this work. he butchers goats, rabbits and chickens unattended and processes them himself. Nathalie can also process rabbits and chickens.

This picture is oddly striking to me. Those are my bare hands, handling organic pork that I was raised to not eat (not the organic part, the pork) because it would send you to hell. How wrong that was!

"Mama please smile."

"Okay that was a good smile."

"No, I did not look homeless Tad. You are on crack."

We bought a vacuum sealer, something we often considered but never bought. The bags can be cut open and reused later, washed first obviously and here in Ak-I can recycle thin plastic.

Plus-it does this! No freezer burn here.

"Mama, I need a picture of the head. can you open it?" Yes, that is a hogs head. we used some of the meat, some dog treats were made and the head was cooked for the chickens to enjoy. I do not feed raw pork due to risk of trichinosis though the dogs eat all other meat raw. Also, note, do not feed bear raw as it too carries this parasite.

My favorite picture of the day.

"I is just gonna shut my eyes as I is getting NO treats."

"Can I has a treat??"

Nathalie is cutting up some of the skin here to dehydrate for Bully later.

You can see bully here in the bottom right, begging and Nathalie giving her the eye.

"Do we cut the skin off our ham before smoking mama?"

Yeah, clueless here.

"I am a zombie and I stole someone's heart."

"Look, I am making the heart beat and it squeezes out congealed blood!"

"The apocalypse is coming! And I am still smiling..."

Budding artist maybe?

Wow.

Typical, my girl loves mustaches.

Not my punk

This one is not mine, but I surely love him. He has spent a big part of the summer with us. The kids swim with him and he is their best local friend. Nathalie took all of these, I just found them on the camera card. He is a normal looking boy I think, but some of these pictures (it would embarrass him), his smile is just pretty! Love the 4th up from bottom, she captured him throwing them at her.

Purple potatoes taste better. No, really.

Bear spray? I ask you... And why such a big 2x4 with the pencil sharpener bolted down? I guess we wont lose it anymore.

"Nathalie, shoot me now with the nerf gun. I will knock the bullets out of the air."

"Roger Roger."

Bully says, "What the hell..."

Rainy day fun

Blueberry

Homemade tortillas, I make these 1-2 x a wk.

Organic vanilla chip muffins

We need a bonfire mama. Its a fire kinda day.

Mama, I made moss hop scotch. Come see.

Max stays with us daytime now that his mom went back to work.

This is going badly.

What is out the window Max? Max says, Its those damn ducks!

Bully loves and hates Max all at once

Bully got into a fight with Kitten and has a torn ear, badly torn as in torn clear through. Wow.

Kitty boy did to Bully's ear like he did to this sheet of paper.

And then he laughed at Bully. Mean cat.

Potatoes

Ok so, yes, its early. We would have had more and bigger potatoes. But we had 2 hrs of sun today. We have had 5 straight weeks with approximately 4 days sun. I mean, it rained on those days also. I looked at our forecast, goodness knows it is about to be winter here in Ak. I considered my options. I gave up a few lbs and we dug our potatoes. We only had a few plants, our garden here is not huge. We have peas and acorn squash still growing rapidly, and lots of tomatoes in the green house, 2 full pepper plants about to be harvested. We had about 30 large heads of broccoli, 12 of cabbage, and a handful of squash and zucchini. The pumpkins and acorn squash will continue to grow with the peas to early frosts. but the potatoes, they were ready to join us. So here is our bucket o'potatoes. We have the top 3rd purple, and the bottom 2 thirds are white potatoes, many quite a bit larger. Potatoes store well as do acorn squash and pumpkin so glad about these harvests.