Sausage Grind, Day 1

Today we trimmed, cut, ground and stuffed 360 pounds of ground pork/beef.  (We add a little bit of beef to our sausage.)  Our crew is hard working and good natured!  It took us six hours to accomplish our task.  We started out with a wonderful lunch in the house, then went over to the shop and started the grind.  We were rewarded for our hard work by an even harder working kitchen crew!  We feasted on roast chicken, noodles sauteed with mushrooms, kale and a mixed green salad.  Dessert was a dark chocolate/pecan tart with dollop of whipped cream.  I was so hungry that I forgot to take pictures of dinner and our amazing cooks, Louise and Eva with a little help the last hour by Del!  What a fun day was had by all!

Tomorrow we will smoke the link sausage, then wrap.  Everyone is going to go home with three different kinds of sausage in both link and bulk.  Breakfast and lunch again by Louise and Eva.

A New Career?

Today we went to Spokane.  Reynald took an introductory class on Long Arm Quilting!  A month ago he announced that he was going to turn the biggest room on the main floor of the barn in to a long arm quilting room.  I thought he was joking.  Well, he wasn't!  Since that announcement he has been doing research on machines, and watching you tube videos and assessing quilts that I have hired done, and mostly just talked incessantly about this project.

So, Brenda told me about a place in Spokane that teaches classes.  Once you have completed the introductory class, you are eligible to rent the machines at this place.  Reynald agreed to give it a try. I dropped him off at 12:30 today and came back to collect him at 3pm!  He was a little apprehensive at first but quickly fell in to learning mode!  There were three women in the class and Reynald.  When I came back, they all told me, as did the teacher, that he had done really well!!!

Here are a few photos of Reynald's first attempt at Long Arm Quilting!  I am really really hoping that he decides to take this seriously and will do all my quilts from here forward!!!

Reynald and his first attempt at Long Arm quilting!

This is one of his sample stitching.  This was done by following a pattern with a laser light.

Another sample.  This was free hand.  He says he likes free hand best so far!

Concentration and good hand-eye coordination are key.

Before we left for Spokane this morning, Baxter got a bath!!!  We will be having house guests this weekend for the sausage grind and he needed to look his best.  Couldn't decide which photo I liked best so I included all of them!

Baxter after his bath, sitting on Reynald's office chair!

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I particularly like this pose!  

Clean Up

Last night Reynald helped me make a small compost bin.  I would like to use it to corral the chicken manure when I clean out the chicken house.  I like to let it sit out in the sun and the rain for at least a year before I put it on the garden or flower beds.  This is a project that I have wanted to do for a long time.  It took less than an hour to do this!  Not really sure why it took so long to get at it?  No matter, it's finished now and will soon be filled with fertilizer.

The new chicken manure compost bin!

Our faithful Gator, loaded up and ready to deliver.

The bin just fit in to the back of the Gator. 

Set in to place with Baxter's supervision.

The front slats slip out so that I can get the wheel barrow in to dump.

A few days ago I got behind my rototiller and lightly tilled in the straw that I had spread a few days before that!  A strong wind was predicted for last weekend and I wanted to get some soil mixed in with the straw so that it would not blow away.

Straw mixed in with soil.  I won't plant until the middle of May.

I'm pretty sure I will move the currants, gooseberry and blue berry plants to this area.  The raspberries are between the fence and the path.  I'll put the others on the garden side.  Also thinking of moving the strawberries to this end of the garden.  

Also took time to do a quick til of the windmill garden.  That was a bit of a chore but I got it done!  I'm heavily leaning towards a bee garden in this area.  My thought right now is to start putting excess plants in, from the windmill out.  Then I might fill in with some squash?  Not quite sure yet, but I'm for sure going to start with flowers.

I think you can see where I ran the rototiller.  It's a little more square footage than I thought, once I got to going!

This weekend, beginning on Friday, we are hosting a sausage grind!  We will do the sausage making in the shop.  We'll eat in the house, maybe the garage, depending upon how many people actually end up coming.  What we do know is that Louise and Eva are cooking and what a feast it will be!  We all have food assignments, but the bulk of the preparation and presentation will be done by these two amazing women.  Though, Chemyn is doing desserts, her specialty.  She is well aware of how fond David, Reynald and I are of dark chocolate.  I'm sure she won't disappoint!

Reynald bought a floor cleaning tool for the power washer, which he tired out today.  It worked so well.  We both went a little OCD cleaning today and now the shop just shines!  It's never really dirty, just not food grade clean!  It is a shop after all!!!!  Sausage makers may have to remove their shoes before they are allowed to enter!

Reynald starting the steam cleaning of the floor.

This did a really good job of polishing the floor clean!