Not a long post today, just some recent pics.
Young bacons, and the mother of future bacons
Afriend at church is getting into pork and found a good deal on some Texas heritage red wattle pigs. His property isn't quite ready to live and keep animals on yet, so I volunteered the pig pen for him to use for a little while. I love having pigs, and I love that my close friend is now gonna be our pork guy. Our kids go to the same homeschool co-op, we go to church together, and he and I work together at both of our jobs, so this is the definition of cooperative community agriculture. Theyre our pork people, we're their rabbit people. I'm excited to be able to help them along as they get set up!
Bread, brie, and bacon
Recent favorite snack/meal. Melissa made fresh bread, I made fresh bacon, so I've been loving enjoying them together with some awesome rich cheese from my ancestral homeland. Cool thing about this bacon is that I only need one slice to feel full. I'm a five slice type guy, and if I eat much more than a slice and a half of this stuff I feel like I need a nap! Such a rich, dense food, and completely handmade. Mangalitsa pork belly from my pig farmer friend in Oklahoma, coarse kosher salt, and organic raw sugar. Best thing I've ever eaten. The sugar carmelizes so perfectly in a cast iron skillet, and the fat just soaked up all the salt it can hold. The fam thinks it's too salty and fatty, but I'm okay with them being dead wrong here cause it means I get the bacon for myself.
First ever turnip and radish harvest
We planted radishes and turnips a few months back, and have started harvesting them for the rabbits. Goodness gracious, I didn't know those tubers could get this big. There's a daikon radish over there right now that's a foot and a half long, the size of my forearm! I need to find a way to eat this kind of stuff, that's some serious food! Til then, I'll eat it by first processing it through a rabbit.
Hmmmm, rabbit and radish stew? I'm gonna have to try that... The poetry of rabbits cooked with rabbit food is irresistible. Anyone got a radish recipe?
Pickled daikon, for sure! Or just simple - super super thinly sliced, salt and pepper, some parsley, a little fetta perhaps, tomato and basil, vinegar and olive oil - leave for a good twenty minutes to soak up the dressing.
Perfect, noted! Good to make personal use of such abundance, I'll post pictures of the monster daikon soon.
I've never been able to grrow it! Delicious. Happy Christmas and New Year.
Happy Christmas and New Year to you too! What's 2022 got in store for y'all?
I miss the free range bacon we used to get before they stopped delivering with the restrictions in 2020. It was just smoked and salted, and like you say, more filling than you get in the shops, generally.
@tipu curate
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Free range bacon, you say? What happened there?
I can probably still get it, but it's a two hour drive and no saying they'll have any in. When the website was up, I could have seen what was in stock. Basically they stopped delivering during covid restrictions and haven't started again. I used to order in bulk and freeze it.
We found our bacon too salty if left too long to cure before freezing. In the end, we kept it a little salty, much saltier than store bacon. My husband's favorite was the maple syrup cure. He'd then smoke it. I made some with an herbal cure and we never smoked that. All were wonderful!.
Maple is my next step. Did you use maple syrup, or maple sugar? I haven't smoked any yet, but I damaged our plum tree and had to take some bigger branches and they're about to be cut up to dry for smoking wood. I've heard plum and peach wood are awesome for smoking.
We always did wet cures, so syrup. Never used those 2, but apple and hickory we've used.
I don't have enough prunings yet for Apple smoking wood. But we've got a friend that's offered up some of his mesquite wood from his new property. Excited to smoke with that as well.
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It feels amazing every time I see someone blogging their harvests, they make me strive to work harder on my garden. Have a nice day ahead and Happy New Year!
Yay to having piggies!
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