Bacon Success.

Today was day six of curing the belly of pork in the hope of producing bacon as we knew it. It worked! For the past six days the meat has been rubbed, the first four with the curing mix, the last two days just rubbing the meat to make sure the cure was well into the meat. It was then removed from it's wooden draining rack and placed in a large bowl of cold water for two hours, the water was then changed and the bacon soaked for a further hour. I then dried it thoroughly.

Impatient to try it, I thinly sliced six pieces, fried with fresh mushroom and eggs it was lunch fit for a king. We knew from the smell as it was cooking that we had real bacon, a smell that is so hard to get from commercially produced bacon, no shrinkage, no white gunge, it was a taste from long ago. Not too salty, with the right amount of sweetness.
I am now looking forward to making air dried ham and more bacon, from what I have read, both of these require dry curing. We will be using wet curing for baking or boiling ham, bath chaps and gammon steaks. Unfortunately after wet curing the meat either has to be used fairly quickly or stored in a freezer, but we have already resigned ourselves to the fact of needing another freezer.
We are hoping that we will be having our own pigs in June, if they clear the bramble patch they will have done a good job and earned their keep, as well as providing us with food.
Of all  farmed animals, pigs have to be the most worth while, they clear land, they produce a cold manure that can be used almost immediately, they are not fussy eaters, they provide you with pork, ham bacon and sausages and lard.
Today we popped over to the friends that will be supplying us with our half pig, we had promised them some Jerusalem Artichokes for planting, we took some spare ones, just to see if their pigs would eat them, a friend in Spain had tried her pigs with them and the pigs refused them.
Well it appears that Irish pigs are the same as Spanish pigs, the roots were dropped into their trough, the pigs looked and then removed them, showing no interest at all. We will have to have a rethink on roots for our pigs.
The general consensus among people that we know that keep pigs is the price per lb works out to 1.50 , that includes everything, from buying the piglets, feeding them and slaughtering costs. That's cheaper than producing a chicken.

One completed unit.

The re-vamping of the kitchen is coming on slowly but surely, we hope to have it finished before the weather changes to garden mode.

Felix, master of all he surveys.

The younger cats love playing on the ladder, Felix, the younger boy is convinced there is something he has not yet seen at the top of the ladder, Sparky is not so sure about it and prefers to stay on the ground.
 The seeds are ordered as is the crop cover, as soon as the land dries out enough we will be out there,

Getting there slowly.

but while we wait we can continue with indoor work.
Last week we had to go to Roscommon, we had a bit of a look around at all the flooding, rivers and stream are no longer, they are large lakes, as was a football ground.

                     The only thing that will be played there is water polo.

It was a lovely sunny day, and the horses in a field alongside the pitch clearly had spring in mind.

They were enjoying the feel of warmth on their backs,  not only were they having their own horse race, every so often they would roll on their backs, kicking their legs in the air. they were beautiful to watch.