Frugal Homesteading Blog

Every Friday, I’ll host a Frugal Friday Farm Linky. This week’s theme is farm animals — and any post about your working critters is welcome (pets such as goldfish or house-cats not so much — this is really about farm animals, or any animal that proves its worth in a  homesteading/ farming sense.

Please enter once per blog, with a post that’s been written during the past 1-2 weeks, and be sure to link back to any page here on frugalhomesteading.com from your blog or website. Share this post with your readers so they can join the fun!

I recently made whole wheat blueberry scones for an afternoon tea time enjoyed by the whole family.

While the kids were home on Christmas break from school, they worked outside with my husband for a couple hours each afternoon on our land-clearing project. They’d build up an appetite long before dinner — and it was cold out.

Tea time was the perfect respite from their labors, refueling them with some warm herbal tea with honey, and of course, a treat.We had muffins some days and gingerbread another, but these seemed even better for an Irish-American tea time tradition.

Recipe for Blueberry Scones

• 2 cups home-milled white wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 TB butter
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl.
3. Cut in butter with a pastry  cutter, until pieces are very small and coated in flour.
4. Add sugar.
5. Add the beaten egg while folding mixture with a rubber spatula.
6. Add the milk and blueberries, mixing gently to form a dough.
7. On a  floured board, form dough into a circle about 1″ thick.
8. Cut dough into 6-8 wedges and place on a greased pan.
9. Bake for 12-15 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool.

And everyone loved them.

Have you baked something fun recently? Share with us in the comments…

After the initial steps to hog butchering, making primal cuts and processing the pork chops, my husband packaged up the remaining roasts and ham steaks while I turned to mixing spices.

The final step in our pig butchering adventure was the sausage making. We didn’t do it all on the first day of pig butchering, either, but let the meat age a bit longer in the refrigerator and stuffed it over the next week before freezing the links and bulk sausage.

We made a couple mistakes along the way, but learned from those mistakes and because of them found a great manual sausage stuffer that I highly recommend. We’ll use it any time we make any kind of stuffed sausage in the future, whether from pork, venison, beef or other meats.

As we butchered the pig, we saved all the meat and fat scraps and cut them into small pieces that would easily fit into the meat grinder. In retrospect, we should have seasoned them prior to grinding, but this was a learning experience and we’ll definitely do that next time.

As I ground the pork, I tried to keep the fat and meat amounts about even in the meat grinder hopper. This resulted in a really wonderful sausage blend — there was just the right amount of fat when frying the sausage and the flavor was great.

After grinding, I separated it into 10-pound sections. We made 20 pounds of breakfast sausage (about half bulk/ patties and half small links), 10 pounds of sweet Italian links and 10 pounds of hot Italian links.

By the way, we used a Waring Pro meat grinder and it’s a great one — highly recommended it.

Now, here’s where we added the spice/ seasoning mixtures to the ground pork, and mixed it all up in my KitchenAid stand mixer. This changed the consistency and made the sausage just slightly  more mushy, which is why next time we’ll add the spices to the meat before grinding.

I mixed the spices in batches for 10 pounds of pork each, and had them waiting in containers for when there was enough meat to mix them into.

We decided to make most of the sausage into links, both kielbasa-sized and the smaller breakfast links. We purchased a manual sausage stuffer (luckily it arrived in two days) that proved invaluable and a great tool to add to our homesteading collection. This was an excellent buy — it’s incredibly sturdy, made in America, and perfect for stuffing any amount of sausage.

It was fun making the links, a new project for both of us. After a while, we found that having one of us on the crank and one twisting the sausage into links (twist the first one way, the second the opposite and so on to keep them from unraveling) worked best.

And so we completed another practical homesteading project — the butchering of a hog, and sausage making.  We plan to make this an annual event as we work toward greater self-sufficiency.

After the first steps in butchering a pig and making the primal cuts, we turned to the rest of the meat processing. We did one side as loin roasts and the other as pork chops. Next time, we’ll probably do both sides in pork chops — they have been amazing, incredibly flavorful and tender. The loin roasts tend to dry out a bit more before cooking completely.

Anyway, we used a reciprocating saw to cut in between the ribs, for 1 1/2″ chops, and then a sharp knife to cut through the meat and fat.

I use the word “we” a good deal, but honestly my husband did all the meat cutting and I did most of the meat packaging, meat grinding, sausage spicing, and baby holding. We were very grateful to our neighbors for having our older three kids over at their house and yard for most of the day while we worked. The kids came in a  few times to watch and we’ll involve them more as they get older.

Our neighbors also have five acres with backyard chickens, and are now planning their own pig raising and butchering for the coming year.

Here is a picture of the pork chop cutting:

The bone-in pork chops made a nice stack as we cut them — I wish I remembered exactly how many we ended up cutting from that side:

And here they are neatly packaged in freezer bags:

Before our next pig butchering, however, we will purchase a vacuum food sealer to extend the freezer life of our meat — with the inevitable air that remains in the freezer bags, you invite freezer-burn.

A few nights after our hog butchering, I made pork chops for dinner. I’ll share the recipe in a  later post, but the basic method was to pan sear the chops to caramelize the fat and bring out an intense flavor, then finish the baking in the oven while making a dried plum sauce in the frying pan used to sear the meat.

Oh my goodness, these were the best pork chops I’ve ever cooked.

Or eaten.

So. Delicious.

After the initial killing, hanging and gutting, butchering a hog involves making the primal cuts.

Something we found very helpful was to have a cut chart handy. Even if you’ve butchered before, it helps to have a diagram available to guide your cuts. The one here is from the Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin “Butchering Livestock at Home”; I found it on Amazon and there is now a Kindle/ ebook version as well. Anyway, it shows you where to make those first cuts. Another diagram in the book shows how each part of the hog is typically processed; i.e. which sections are best cured, or used for specific cuts.

It says to use a saw to cut through the backbone, and we found that was necessary — John used a power reciprocating saw with a new blade; it was ideal for the job. We used it later in the day for cutting the bones as we made the pork chops as well.

This is what it looked like as he finished cutting the carcass in half:

We did it slightly differently than the chart; allowing both sides to hang. We thought it would make the  cutting easier, and we actually hadn’t yet gotten out this booklet; at first we were working off another diagram that was not as good.

But working with two hanging halves was not bad, according to my husband and brother in law who were actually doing the work. I was inside making spice mixes and covering the counter with butcher paper (oh wait, John did that too; but I was holding the baby and a bit handicapped at the moment.)

While the day was cool, it was crisp and clear — a perfect fall day for working outdoors. Any sort of precipitation or high winds would have really made the work miserable since we don’t have a large shed or barn on our property yet. If you’ll be butchering a hog outdoors, be sure to check the forecast before you begin.

If you don’t have an A-frame structure (I refuse to discuss the fact that the one we used was our kids’ swing set frame, borrowed for those two days with the swings removed), a strong board hung between two trees works as well — as my brother in law discovered the next month when it was their turn.

Following the cut chart, the men soon delivered an array of meat pieces to the kitchen:

Those are some large sections of meat — they are resting on butcher paper covering the children’s table in our breakfast nook:

In the next post, I’ll show how we processed the meat after these initial cuts were made.

The first step in butchering a pig is the kill. But when your homestead has the quality of hobby farm, and the line between farm animal and pet is often blurry, the kill is a difficult thing. When you raise your own animals for meat, you truly understand and appreciate the sacrifice of life that happens — has to happen — for us to eat meat.

And so first, we said goodbye. My brother-in-law, on the left, came to help with our pig butchering and my husband John, on the right, reciprocated a few weeks later when Dave and his wife butchered their own pig. We live in the same county, about 40 minutes from each other. We started our hog butchering in the evening, with the kill and hanging.

Priscilla, as we had called her, was not as happy in the cold weather as she has been during the long, warm days of the spring and summer. We didn’t like seeing her unhappy — even with a run-in shelter and plenty of grain, she simply hated the cold. Of course, to everything there is a season, and the fall is traditionally butchering time on any farm. Still, there was a sadness to her death, and the children miss her.

After she was killed (my husband used a .45 caliber pistol and she went right down. She never felt a thing — her passing was very humane), Dave quickly made a sharp, clean cut of her throat, severing the main artery, to allow her to bleed out quickly.

About ten minutes after the death, they hung her on an A- frame structure for evisceration and initial cutting. My husband put S hooks through the rear hocks, attached them to tie straps, threaded those through the eye hooks on the A frame and attached the ends to the truck bumper to pull the pig up to a hanging position. I’m sorry the photo is so dark.

The pig front/ belly area was then skinned, using thin, sharp knives and leaving as much fat as possible.

The next step in butchering a hog, which is really the grossest part to me, is evisceration.

After the intestines and internal organs are removed, the interior of the carcass is rinsed with water, just sprayed from the hose.

This gives you a clean carcass to work with. This hung overnight in cold weather, allowing the meat to chill to the bone. We began the primal cuts and meat processing the next morning.

I’ll continue the pig butchering series in my next post.

Have you ever butchered livestock or poultry on your homestead? How did it go?

Our homesteading adventure continued this summer and fall with a new baby, a good tomato harvest, a  fattened pig, home butchering and sausage making, new day-old chicks, and a brand new hen house. I’ll blog about each of these aspects in much more detail in the coming weeks, but here’s an in-a-nutshell update about us and our little homestead.

• New baby: born in July, baby Thad joins his four older siblings and mom and dad on the homestead. He is a very happy, laid-back little guy with sweet brown eyes. We love having a large family — it makes everything more of an adventure. It also means that we look at our efforts to produce food from our land with a feeling of great responsibility. As enjoyable as it is, we need to be ready in case we are ever dependent upon it for our very lives.
• Small garden harvest: Our mini garden consisted of tomatoes, peppers and yellow squash this year. We really enjoyed all of it and are planning a large, raised bed garden for spring/ summer 2012. My husband and the kids are already clearing the underbrush and small trees for the garden.
• Our pig, which we got as a piglet and raised throughout the summer and fall, reached a very healthy weight of nearly 300 pounds before we butchered her in November. Home butchering was an all-day project, and the meat rendering was completed over the following week. We learned quite a bit from the work and found some great recipes along the way — looking forward to sharing those, as well as pictures of our home-cured bacon and sausage links, in the coming weeks. 
• Coop & new chicken flock: We are currently brooding 23 female egg laying chickens and a rooster-to-be, which we purchased as day old chicks via mail order. They are currently in our basement, under a heat lamp, and now that their feathers are coming in we’ll move them out to the new coop in a few days.

As the days on our little homestead have shortened and gotten colder, we’ve enjoyed evenings by the fire planning our spring garden, growing chicken flock and the next pig we’ll raise.

As we watch inflation continue and the American dollar continue its alarming descent, we’re continually reminded that self-sufficiency could be critical in the coming months and years. I encourage you to take steps to increase your own self-reliance now and in the weeks and months ahead.

To see what others are doing, check out the Homestead Barn Hop.This is my first time participating and I was really impressed by the wonderful blog posts and great projects others are doing.

I’d love it if you have a moment to leave a comment below, letting me know what you’re doing on your own land or urban homestead!

We bought six day-old chicks to add to our egg laying chickens flock, brooding them in May and June and introducing them to the flock in July. Here are a couple pictures of them during the brooding phase, which we did in a large plastic tote in our garage:

We rested the heat lamp on a wire shelf at the top of the tote, but only needed to keep it on at night as the garage stayed very warm during the day.  We lined the bottom of the tote with paper and ensured they had plenty of chick starter feed and water available to them at all times.

All except the black chick are Araucana hens, that wonderful breed that lays blueish and greenish eggs and has endearing physical characteristics, including feather tufts at their ears and little to no tail.

They’re not old enough to lay eggs yet, but the pullets are now living with the rest of our flock and are about 1/2 to 2/3 the size of the full grown hens.

We’re turning part of our lawn into a vegetable garden.

Blessed with a large, relatively flat backyard (and there’s no front yard to speak of; it’s mostly trees and very shaded) we decided to utilize some of the land for growing tomatoes, peppers, squash and melons this year. The area used as a garden by the previous inhabitants is actually one of the most shaded areas, and we’ve already turned it into our chicken run and, more recently, pigpen.

So, we looked to the area between the kids’ playsets and the animals to do our planting. It’s a perfect spot — nearly full sun all day, good soil, within reach of the garden hose.

We’re definitely starting simply on the gardening front. A dozen heirloom tomato plants, a few peppers, several squash and six cantaloupe plants round out our selection of productive plants.

My husband, John, dug holes in the lawn, we removed the sod, and mixed the existing soil with a large shovelful of the rich, pig- and chicken-manure-enriched dirt from the animal pen before planting the seedlings.

If we have enough tomatoes, I’ll use this spaghetti sauce canning recipe to preserve some for the winter months ahead.

How does your garden grow?

Update: No more blog carnivals – I guess they are a bit outdated now — but I’ll be doing a monthly “linky” post where others can share their blog posts — I’ll update this again when I have ti all set up.

Blog carnivals are a great way to showcase your blog, attract new visitors, and find other, related blogs to read and network with. Our Frugal Homesteading Carnival will go live on June 15th — so be sure to get your submissions in soon. Please write a brief description of your post and choose a category based on its topic. Our carnival categories include:

• home
• garden
• animals
• food
• energy
• community
• economy
• personal finance

One submission per blog, please; and comments must be enabled.

Interestingly, I always seem to get a submission or two about credit cards from blogs trying to make money from the advertising (credit card companies have lots of money — your money). I welcome all submissions but sort through them and will never post a pro-debt/ credit card article.

Anyway, my recent post on becoming debt free was included in the Integrated Finance Carnival earlier this month. If you’re curious what a blog carnival looks like, be sure to check that out.

I hope to see your post in the upcoming carnival — if you do submit a post and it’s included, please link back to this blog in a timely fashion.