A spot of hog tyin and sausage makin

Katie and I went down to visit Duncan and Jeannie at Gordon's Knob yesterday. Armed with our trusty Moulinex mincer, our main aim was to make some sausages with some of the pork from the pigs that were slaughtered around Christmas time. Another task was to help Duncan move one of the piglets he had sold to a couple down the road. After a couple of doses of Dutch Courage, we went down to the shed where the three piglets and Mother Darcy were staying. We led Darcy to the paddock across the road, so as she didn't start getting too wild while we were taking her progeny away. This part of the operation went quite nicely, with her quite happy to follow the bucket of feed through the gates.

Once Darcy was redomiciled, we set to with shifting the piglet. The three of them were gated in the shed with a couple of upturned apple crates. with Katie making sure they couldn't push the crates over while we were going for the capture, Duncan and I entered the pen. Check this video to see the result.

If the video doesn't work, it's on YouTube here as well.

The bastards jumped over the apple crates, off to the to the top paddock and way away from us real quick. Anyhow, that was pig capture over for the evening. We led Darcy back to the shed so as to attract the piglets back, and headed back to the house, pork chops and potatoes and some cold homebrew.

The sausage making was a much more succesful operation. We blended 1500 grams of pork with a few breadcrumbs, some white and balck pepper, some salt, a pinch of mace and 45 leaves of sage from our garden in West Hobart. Fed the lot throught the mincer, stuffed it in the casings by way of funnel and reamer, exclude the air, twist and tie.

And hey presto, our first bunch of bangers! We left them overnight to let the flavours settle in, and had them for breakfast.

Absolutely sensational, if I do say so myself. We had some mince left over, so Katie whipped together for a couple of post-breakfast scotch eggs, which were equally scrum!

We'll be getting into some more sausage making real soon, that's for sure. It's nice to have proper, 100% pork snags rather than the more predominant beef that seems to be the norm in Australia. they even put it in salami over here!

Oh, and the pig shifting...we managed to do it. The screaming is something you really don't want to subject yourself to. I was holding the front legs with the buggers face next to mine, and Duncan managed to sustain a trotter in the ribs. Both scarred for life I think!

There's an album of photos of the whole pork fuelled adventure right here.

Gone down to Gordons Knob

Tim & Katie & I went down to Duncan & Jeannie's place at Gardeners Bay for a Saturday night feed. Part of the property is a hill called "Gordon's Knob". It's a beautiful piece of land, with a great house and dams, sheds and all sorts of rural kinda stuff. Some of it used to be a vineyard, but is now rapidly getting back to virgin bushland. Star of the show undoubetdly is Darcy the sow, a very sociable one year old, 120kg pig. For the knackery Darcy is not destined. Her primary role will be kids entertainer (people stop by her field to say hello), and matriach of all the yummy bacon, ham and sausage producers she will undoubetdly mother. Katie & I have seen Hugh Fearnley Whittinstall's Pig in a Day, and are keen to sponsor one of the piglets. Yummy.

For dinner, Tim whipped up a massive paella, and Jeannie conquered all with her English Onion soup and apple crumble dessert. In bed, stuffed by midnight. I think we'll be regular visitors down the knob.

There's a few more pix of proceedings here...