Home Butchery.

This has been another busy week. On Monday we picked up the two pigs that our friends had had slaughtered at our local butchers shop.
 We had decided that we would like to have our half of Gloucester Old Spot just as a side so we could practice our butchery skills in preparation for when we have our own pigs. Butchery  done here by a butcher seems to consist of running the various parts through a  band saw, not too much attention is given to the various cuts that we grew up with. We wanted specific  cuts for curing and sausage making, and we did not want joints so big that you would need a dozen people to eat it all.

Half a pig ready for butchering.

As it turned out it was far easier than we had imagined, although to be honest it is not the first time that we have butchered, we have done venison and goat kids in the past, so had some idea of what was needed. I would like to say that we will use everything but the oyk, however we have not kept the trotters , tail or ears. In Spain the ears are considered a delicacy and are often served as Tapas, lovely if you like chewing tasteless bits of gristle.
 Half of the belly is now dry curing for bacon,

Belly of pork ready to slow roast.

               the other half we cut into strips for slow roasting.
 A small amount of the gammon is in a wet cure, hopefully this will turn into Gammon Steaks which will then have to be frozen. The cheeks are dry curing hopefully to turn into Guanciale, this according to recipes is similar to Pancetta, after the dry curing it is then air cured for a further five to six weeks and can then be eaten raw.
We are hoping to smoke the pork belly once the dry curing is complete. We had come up with all sorts of ideas for making a smoking chamber, then the light came on. We have an old boiler room which had housed the oil boiler when we first moved here. Now redundant and no longer housing a boiler it is probably the ideal place to turn into our smoke house.

Simple and delicious.

We have tried the first bit of pork, the belly, slow roasted in crab-apple jelly, totally delicious, served simply with buttery mashed potatoes and cauliflower with grated cheese. We look forward to many more meals from this lovely pig. Congratulations to Pat and Celine for producing such a quality pig.
We took a trip up to Florence Court in Fermanagh to the wood yard that we used to use years ago, we knew that Danny the owner had oak that we could use for the smoking, plus we wanted to get the fencing posts for the pig run. Fencing posts here are very expensive and many of them are not pressure treated , cross the boarder into the north and you are paying just £1 for a tanalised post as opposed to 2.25 euros here, we also came away with suitable wood for Simon's wood carving .

Even the bees are out enjoying the sunshine.

It was a lovely trip out and a beautiful day, even the bees were active in Danny's hives.

Sheep gently grazing on a rocky outcrop.

            Fermanagh is a very beautiful county and well worth visiting.
We have a glut of eggs at the moment, we wont be incubating any for at least another month, we are too far behind on getting the garden sorted out to give time to young chicks. What to do with all these eggs? We can only eat a certain amount and only eat so much cake, so lemon curd it is.

I have done the first three jars and will do more tomorrow plus make more ice-cream. No doubt when we are ready to start incubating we will have a shortage, that's the way it normally goes. feast or famine.

Spring really does seem to be here, primroses are out along with the dwarf daffodils, the larger daffs have now all dropped their heads and will be in bloom by the weekend. I even found some snowdrops in bloom today after thinking that the ones I had planted had failed, they just needed a few more days to show themselves, hopefully they will spread.

Food glorious food.

As my birthday was approaching I decided it was time to make carrot cake again,

A carrot with pretensions.

we had planted more carrots than usual last year especially to make this old favorite of ours.

Carrot cake with a zing.

I decided to give a bit of zing to the cake by adding a few Cardamom seeds to the mix and to use a little Cointreau in the cream topping, it was lovely, I don't normally fiddle with recipes, especially if it is one of Cranks, probably the best recipe book that we use, but as it was for my birthday I wanted something a little different. As it happened it was good that I had made a cake as we had two lots of visitors that day so had something to feed to them. The first visitors were not aware of it being my birthday, as I get older I do try to forget about such things, in fact I had to ask Simon how old I was, and then wished I hadn't.
Our second lot of visitors were a wonderful surprise. It was our friend who has had the strokes,  his partner, plus son. When we had seen them only six days beforehand,  Pat was still in his wheelchair. t The car drew up, and with a little help out came Pat, walking, OK with the help of crutches, but he is walking again, it was wonderful to see him up and on his feet. He was from the start determined that these strokes would not defeat him, and despite all the health problems they had remembered my birthday, bringing with them a lovely bottle of wine and a card. So many thanks guys, and well done Pat, you will be digging the garden again before you know it.
The weather does seem to be chilly now despite the rain and gale force winds, just the right weather for a hot bowl of steaming soup.

Freshly made soup, ideal for a winters day.

One of my favorite soups is cream of mushroom, so simple  and only takes fifteen minutes to make, served with fresh home made bread, a lovely warming lunch for cold damp weather.
I rather feel as though I go into semi hibernation in this type of weather, Simon had been asking me for over a week where I wanted to go for my birthday meal, I kept putting of any decision in case we had any frosts to contend with, however we have been more or less free of them so on Saturday I made up my mind, our usual place 'The Purple Onion' in Tarmonbarry, although it is a fifty minute drive, the food is always worthwhile, locally produced and

                                  they now have a good selection of Artisan beers.

 The Slow cooked belly of Gloucester Old Spot pork is worth the drive. We had a beautiful meal and it was worth pulling myself away from the fireside.

We have a lot of small birds around now, and at least three Robins, all keeping to their own territories, it's lovely to see such an assortment of wild life, but we can well do without the mink.
We had suffered one attack last year, this year we have lost three rabbits to them. We were appalled to see one of these horrible creatures along side the pond, outside our back door. Tess quickly gave chase but failed to catch it, we are being even more vigilant now, so far they have never gone into a hen run when the electric fence is on, but I would not trust that it wont happen. We have set a trap, and although it has been triggered the mink has evaded it. Living so close to the river I think we have been lucky so far, but the river is twice it's normal size at the moment. Maybe it will stop raining soon.

            On our trip to the coast yesterday we saw two flocks of Barnacle geese,

                                    one with over fifty birds in it and a smaller one.

On reading up on them it appears that they are on the Amber list in Ireland with only ten known sites. We feel privileged to have seen them.

I can do it as well.

Our two younger cats are now growing up fast, Felix loves to copy whatever Sparky does and was very frustrated at being unable to jump on top of the airing cupboard, at last he has made it and now can join Sparky in playing King of the Castle.

Bracket fungi.