We have our first farm-bred goslings! Two of the geese had already abandoned their nests when the one in the middle of the foundation hole hatched eight goslings on Tuesday. All six grown up geese are ecstatic. We are too.

We think we’ve figured out what will get us four clutches next year: 1. Toulouse geese need more than a foot of water to mate in. The geese are happy with six inches, but the eggs won’t be fertile and 2. The geese lay on the ground and picked a very wet spot to nest in. I picked up several light eggs that probably started to develop and then drowned. Next year we plan to pen them in a dry spot with a heated cattle water tank. This will also let us collect the early eggs which we can sell or eat ourselves. Geese live about forty years and we’ve heard that Toulouse in particular don’t take well to inbreeding, so our current goal is to get our current flock breeding reliably before we think about expanding it.

Ella Mae is unfortunately no longer with us. Lisa will write about that anon.

We have Danny on mowing duty. We have a lot of edges where grass is finally growing, mostly unfenced, mostly small. So we’ve been tethering him in each patch for a few hours to a few days depending on size. He seems to like it, as well he ought compared to the balage he’s been living on. He does have a spectacular ability to get himself tangled though.

Speaking of balage, our hay guy has 100 bales left from last year. We’re buying them, at a discount of course. That should get us comfortably through the winter. Of course we still need dry hay for the horses as well.

The primary time sink continues to be the garden. All the beds from last year are planted. We’ve added another 90 feet of raised bed. 65 feet have 65 tomato plants in them, the rest have strawberries. The tomatoes are planted through black plastic, and like the strawberries are very very happy. I’ve milled all the logs that John the Logger left us in 2008 and I have 162 feet of 6×6 to make more bed. We have many plants in flats in the hoop house that need homes. We don’t have the soil immediately available, but we have a backhoe and need stock ponds.

Lisa has also planted 6 flower boxes on the main deck, and 6 boxes of lettuce on the upper balcony. We need to pick up more potting soil before we do more window boxes.

May is ‘Get in the Garden’ month here. The last frost date used to be Memorial Day, but over the last few years it’s been more like May 15. We’re hoping that last night’s frost was the last, but we’ll be holding the tomatoes and peppers indoors for at least a week to be sure.

We’ve got all but one of the existing raised beds planted to early cold crops. We’re saving one bed with trellis for the cukes. We have given up on the “As early as the ground can be worked” thing, too. It doesn’t actually pay. If you wait two more weeks until most days are actually pleasant you only lose a couple of days growing time, and your germination is way better.

The garlic planted last fall is up and looking great, despite being snowed on and frozen several times. We’re trying to figure out why we didn’t plant three times as much. In 2005 we didn’t harvest soon enough. This time we’ll get it right (July) and save most of it for next years seed.

The chickens are uprooting onion plants left and right, which is driving us crazy. You only get one shot at onions, and we didn’t plant enough of them either. This afternoon we patched all the places the chickens are using to get into the garden, but they can still fly over the gates. Probably most of the fence as well, but the gates are shorter and flying is work if you’re a chicken. We’re hoping to at least have fewer of them in the garden.

The horseradish is doing great. Since we only use a quart a year, there should be a big surplus to split for future sale. Only one rhubarb plant survived (How can that be? It’s almost as tough as horseradish.) We’ve planted 5 more, three from Jung, two from Miller’s. The ones from Jung were perfectly fine little plants, but the ones from Miller were monster chunks of root albeit without much in the way of buds. I know which is which and we’ll how they look next year.

I remember posting last year that the purple asparagus was gone. It isn’t. There’s quite a bit of it left and we just planted another bundle of it from Agway to replace the ones the geese ate last year. The All-Male is all ferned out already, while the purple is still just shoots. We’re still getting new shoots on a daily basis. Next year, we eat some.

Today’s accomplishment was to extend the asparagus bed and plant 50 strawberry plants, 25 each June bearers and everbearers. We’re hoping the everbearers at least give us a crop this year.

We have two impossible and one hard thing to do between now and Memorial Day. Last year’s potato patch is supposed to be sweet corn this year. It’s full of grass and too many rocks to rototill. We have a place to put the tomatoes and peppers, but it needs raised beds. About six of them. And they’ll block the tractor from the corn patch. The hard part is planting 100 lbs of potatoes over in the pigs garden. We need to trench, and I think we need to trench by hand. It’s wonderful soil but there are rocks (boulders or ledge, don’t know, doesn’t matter) eight foot in diameter out there.

The season started early. There was a big run on Feb 28 that we missed. It was March 2 before we were fully tapped, which would have been fine the previous two years. Next year start tapping on Feb 15.

The warm weather in mid March was the end for a lot of people. Being in Marlow, we got another run in the cold weather at the end of the Month. The early stuff was light, and had a wonderful complex delicate flavor, I’d say the best we’ve ever made. The stuff at the end was grade B, black and strong maple flavor. (Note: Vermont grade B has an implication of off flavors. In New Hampshire the spec is only strong and dark, no off flavor allowed.) We kept some of both, for different purposes.

I don’t think the sap was as sweet this year as in prior years. We seemed to put in more sap per gallon of syrup than other years. I tapped half a dozen red maples this year, mostly when I needed a tree to hold up tubing and the available tree was a red maple. I don’t think I tapped enough to explain the lower sugar level. (I tapped a few silver maples by mistake in 2008. Their sap is not sweet, but there’s also almost none of it, so it didn’t actually affect the sweetness.)

I was able to get the tractor up the snowmobile trail this year for the first time. That let me add about 25 taps up there, which was good because the fence cut off a bunch of our Mack Hill Rd. taps.

We lost a lot of sap last year because I wasn’t here to bring it in before the buckets overflowed. This year I was here, but had to empty some buckets twice a day. Next year I want a gallon per tap of storage in the woods, and as much again up here. Then we can take a day off even during a good flow.

I pulled the last of the taps on April 12 and two or three trees were still running.

This is the final wrap up on my experiences moving us from local hosting over a T1 to remote hosting using satellite Internet.

First, satellite sucks. Clarke Maxwell explained way back in the 1840s that you will have a half second ping to anywhere. Isaac Newton explained 200 years before that, why it will always be expensive and bassackward.

And the Reagan Revolution explained 30 years ago why rural Americans have the same broadband options as residents of Congo. (Dialup works because the Roosevelts, Teddy and Franklin between them, made the telephone company a regulated utility that had to deliver or get shut down, before Reagan could sell us out to Wall St.)

The price of a T1 is insane as well. It’s a dedicated pair from the CO, and if the local switch is really neandertal, back to Manchester. Clear the traps and add RS-422 drivers. A one time $100 on top of a burglar alarm connection would be fair. About $500/month less than I was paying. Can you tell I’m an unhappy camper with a degree in electrical engineering?

Moving our WordPress installations from one server to another just doesn’t quite work. I first tried exporting and importing the databases, using PHPMyAdmin. This almost worked, but it did require switching DNS at the same time. And I had to leave DNS on the old server thinking it was still www.mackhillfarm.com.

I suppose I might try using PHPMyAdmin to edit the settings before I export. That seems dangerous: I mean I’ve got backups, but, it could be a mess.

The next time I tried the export-import using WordPress itself. That avoided some PITA stuff that made me try two or three times with PHPMyAdmin. However it left my blogroll and various plugin settings behind. I can see how it could be tricky to do the plugin settings, but come on, the blogroll?

I tried to upgrade Thesis as part of the migration. This was a mistake. I should have upgraded to 1.6 first. Copying my old Custom folder didn’t work because 1.6 has two stylesheets instead of one. I still haven’t figured out where OpenHook stores its’ data. I had to send my code to gmail to paste it back in. That’s better than hacking on template files, but there’s still room for improvement.

There was one final gotcha: Our instances are so old that I had to set up friendly URLs (both people and search engine ) myself, using the .htaccess file and mod_rewrite on Apache. WordPress now supports friendly URLs on its own, just a teensy bit different than the ones I set up years ago.  I had been going to accept the temporary hit in googlerank and switch to the built in version, but because there are links all over Lisa’s Flickr stream, I had to rebuild my original version. It took about ten minutes once I figured out the problem but it’s ten minutes every time I move, for the next forever.

Recreational users of federal lands in the west are beginning to object to the millennia old practice of leaving sheep on the open range under the protection of dogs. Ignorant flatlanders do things that even a human shepherd would get justifiably angry about, and then think it’s unreasonable when the guard dog tries to eat them.

In response, the American Sheep Industry Association (ASI) has come with a set of proposed guidelines for using guardian dogs.You can read them here.

Unfortunately the ASI proposes applying the same guidelines to herding dogs as to guard dogs. These breeds have completely different jobs. Attempting to apply these guidelines would produce a dog that would do neither job well.

Getting past that, the entire document postulates that the sheep owner grazing on open range with a federal grazing permit, but suggests that the guidelines are appropriate for private land as well. I cannot speak to situation of 10,000 plus acre private unfenced ranches in the west, but here in the east, on fenced, several hundred acre spreads, they cannot reasonably be followed, nor would they protect neither the sheep nor the trespassing city slickers.

Dear Ms Jensen,

I am a farm sheep producer in New Hampshire. I have several concerns with the guidelines as proposed.

First, before any specifics, it’s completely inappropriate to attempt to apply the same guidelines to herding dogs and guardian dogs. They have different jobs, which require different personalities and different physical capabilities. What’s appropriate treatment and behavior for a 40 lb Icelandic Sheepdog or Australian Shepherd whose job is to put animals where I want them is not at all appropriate for a 120 lb Great Pyrenees that I want to intimidate (or eat) “coyotes” that are actually picture perfect Red Wolves. I’m happy to expand, but I’m sure that any shepherd who uses both types of dogs will agree.

Specific issues:

Adequate food and water for LGDs will be available at all times. Should be “will be provided.” As long as the dog is adequately fed, free choice feeding not only should not be required, but may well be incorrect management practice in the instant situation.

“Shearing/clipping/grooming of LGDs should be done to prevent matted coats and to prevent overheating in the summer.” Beyond clipping out the occasional knot, the dog is much better off with its natural coat. The appropriate guidance is “Don’t use a Maine dog in Georgia.”

“LGDs must be trained to respond to basic voice commands. Dogs that cannot be controlled by voice commands will not be allowed to work on federal lands.” Guardian dogs have been bred to be autonomous. You want your herding dog to do what you tell it. You pay the guard dog to stop and decide if it agrees with you. If you train it otherwise, you are hampering its ability to handle a situation on its own.

“LGDs must be socialized to people. They need to be trained so that vehicles, ATVs, hikers (with or without a dog) and bikers do not appear in the dog’s mind to pose a threat to the sheep.” My dog understands that people outside my fence are not a threat to the sheep. People are allowed inside my fence if and only if my wife or I bring them in.

“In areas where potential exists for conflict between LGDs and the public, sheep producers should consider operating with both a day and a night herder, supported by herding dogs, in order to have someone with the sheep and with the LGDs at all times.” Earth to ASI. This is a family farm. I sleep at night. If I could be out with a gun every night I wouldn’t need the guardian dog. When she needs me, the gun and I do show up.

“Permittees and agencies should cooperate in developing routing schedules designed to ensure that flocks and associated LGDs are no closer than ¼ mile to any trailhead, significant use trail, developed or significant use dispersed recreational site, etc., during weekends, holidays or other high potential recreational use periods as specified by the agencies.” As a good neighbor, I allow a public snowmobile trail across my land. I have fence along the south side of it. My livestock, including dogs, are right across that fence. I only have half a square mile of land. I could either close the trail or give up my LGD. This is another “Earth to ASI” case.

I realize that these guidelines are nominally only for permittees on Federal lands. However there are many “suggestions” in them that they should apply to private lands as well. Aside from the herding dog/guarding dog issue I can’t address issues in the western US. I am however sure that these guidelines are seriously wrong for any place east of the Mississippi, whether north or south.

Sincerely,

Frank Richards

We’ve been picking away at the seed order since Christmas, and finally finished it tonight. There’s no doubt we’ll still end up scrambling for something we forgot, but that’s the real world.

The first order was to Miller Nurseries

That’s one more bundle of onion plants than we bought last year, but probably still not enough. Lisa brought up the last leeks today, so we’ll probably be out by March 1. We also didn’t realize that we had both leeks and onions until September. Between the two, I’m already thinking I should get another bundle. I’m heroically resisting. Last year we also bought sweet potato slips from Miller’s. I was not impressed with them, so this year we’re getting them from Jung.

We ordered three items we couldn’t find anywhere else from Hirt’s Gardens on Amazon. Hirt’s Gardens actually seems to be a mashup: two of the items are actually coming from Forestmaker. We’re getting hosed on the shipping, but when you order one pack of seeds, it just sucks.

Chires Baby Corn
Sweet Baby Broccoli
Purple Passion Spinach

The baby corn is for stir fry. The “Baby Broccoli” would be broccolini elsewhere in the world, but some California grower has trademarked the name here in the US even though it has no rights to the actual genetics. It’s also sold as ‘heirloom broccoli’ although it’s apparently a 20th century hybrid of broccoli and an Asian relative, kai-lan. The spinach is for Fisher-Price gardening.

We couldn’t find our Tomatofest catalog, so we just copied the 2008 order:

Items Ordered: Price: Status:
# 1 of : Alicante – Heirloom Tomato Seeds
$2.95 Processing
# 1 of : Black Crimson Heirloom Tomato
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Blondkopfchen-Heirloom Tomato Seeds
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Bulgarian Triumph
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Debarao-Tomato Seeds
$2.00 Processing
# 1 of : Earliana
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Gold Dust
$2.95 Processing
# 1 of : Japanese Black Trifele-Tomato Seeds
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Long Keeper-Tomato Seeds
$2.95 Processing
# 1 of : Paul Robeson
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Peche Jaune
$2.95 Processing
# 1 of : Slava-Tomato Seeds
$2.00 Processing

We never actually planted the bell pepper seeds we ordered from Johnny’s last year, so we’ll be planting them this year. Same goes for the 8000 seed minimum order of Hatch chilies from last year.

We ordered these from The Maine Potato Lady

ORDER DETAILS UNIT PRICE TOTAL
======================================================================
QTY 1
SKU 345RT
PRODUCT Red Thumb, organic – 3 Pound
PRICE $11.75 $11.75

QTY 1
SKU 466MR
PRODUCT Mountain Rose, oganic- 5 Pound
PRICE $10.50 $10.50

QTY 1
SKU 524ABC
PRODUCT All Blue, conventional – 20 Pound
PRICE $14.75 $14.75

We’re also planning to pick up 50 pounds of Green Mountain potatoes at the Keene Agway. Local Harvest pinged us about a shortage of root crops, and Green Mountain is on the Slow Food Ark of Taste. (Honestly, the Ark of Taste for veggie cultivars is a rubber duckie not an ark. There are thousands of flavor variations adapted to hundreds of microclimates.)

Tonight we ordered from R.H. Shumway

SKU Product Size Quantity Product Total
01750A Large Smooth Prague Celeriac Packet 1 $1.75
02413A Cumin Packet 1 $1.85
02437A Rue Packet 1 $1.85
06104a Antique Sunflower Mix packet 6 $11.10
06857a French Harlequin Marigold packet 2 $5.50
09050A Pyrethrum Packet 1 $1.85
12272 Madaline Hill Rosemary plants 3 $15.95

This started because Jung doesn’t carry celeriac, which Lisa wants to try. Shumway seems to be a bit cheaper than Jung, although they apparently have common ownership. I piled on the rest of the seeds largely to see if the quality is comparable, in which case we’ll move our primary order to Shumway next year. The last item is three plants of a Rosemary cultivar that they claim is good to -15F (-26C). We haven’t hit -20 F (-29C) since January of 2000, so I’m betting 15 bucks on global warming.

This is the big order to Jung

02129A Marketmore 76 Cucumber 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
01675A Nantes Or Coreless Carrot 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
03290A Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkin 1 @ $2.45 $2.45
03028A Early Jalapeno Pepper 1 @ $1.95 $1.95
03580A Spineless Beauty Hybrid Squash 1 @ $2.45 $2.45
02409A Delfino Cilantro 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
01120N Golden Rod Bush Bean 1 @ $6.95 $6.95
03425A Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach 1 @ $1.55 $1.55
02648A Little Sweetie Hybrid Muskmelon 1 @ $3.25 $3.25
52880 Vinyl Stretch Tie 1/2 Wide X 150 Ft Roll 1 @ $2.95
$2.95
02515a Buttercrunch Lettuce 1 @ $1.55 $1.55
00870A Toma Verde Tomatillos 1 @ $1.50 $1.50
02569a Baby Leaf Zesty Mesclun Mix 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
01020N Blue Lake 274 Bush Bean 1 @ $4.95 $4.95
01697A Yellowstone Hybrid Carrot 1 @ $2.25 $2.25
03521A Celestial Scallop Mix Hyb Summer Squash 1 @ $2.25
$2.25
01625A Cosmic Purple Hybrid Carrot 1 @ $1.50 $1.50
03673A Table King Bush Acorn Squash 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
02415A Florence Fennel 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
02712a Cajun Delight Hybrid Okra 1 @ $2.35 $2.35
03345A Easter Egg I I Blend Radish 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
04742X Jungs Sweet Potato Sampler 1 @ $21.95 $21.95
02920A Extra Early Little Marvel Pea 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
04587 Victoria Rhubarb 3 @ $4.98 $14.95
03550A Horn Of Plenty Hybrid Squash 1 @ $1.95 $1.95
01614A Atomic Red Carrot 1 @ $2.45 $2.45
02260A Long Island Mammoth Dill 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
02385A Catnip 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
02830A Moss Curled Parsley 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
01768A Autumn Explosion Hybrid Indian Corn 1 @ $2.45 $2.45
01590A Stonehead Hybrid Cabbage 1 @ $2.25 $2.25
02430A Italian Oregano 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
52886 Natural Jute Twine 1 @ $4.95 $4.95
02802A Joi Choi Hybrid Pak Choi 1 @ $2.25 $2.25
02847A Hollow Crown Parsnip 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
01755A Golden Self-Blanching Celery 1 @ $1.95 $1.95
02220A Bush Pickle Cucumber 1 @ $1.95 $1.95
01829N Trinity Hybrid Sweet Corn 1 @ $8.95 $8.95
02440A Broadleaf Sage 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
04105A Sugar Baby Watermelon 1 @ $1.95 $1.95
02460A Winter Thyme 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
02357A Pistou Basil 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
01070N Royal Burgundy Bush Bean 1 @ $5.45 $5.45

Last year we got calls from local nurseries hoping we had extra plants to sell. Neither the job market nor the quality of produce from away is any better this year. We are a licensed nursery, so we’ll be starting all the seeds we have. (Well, maybe not all the chilis) If they make it, somebody will buy them.

We’ve been keeping busy doing unexciting stuff that needs to be done.

We’re slowly drawing down the mass of pig food and yogurt that we got over the holidays. My best guess is that we’ll make it to the end of the month before we have to give the piggies bought food. That said, we’re probably spending two hours/day hauling stuff in to thaw and dumping thawed yogurt into buckets. There is so much packaging that it generates bags and bags of trash! What a mess. We’re also having trouble getting enough liquid water down to the pigs. Everyone else has heated troughs, but the pigs stand in their water and destroy the heaters.

I’ve been putting a lot of time into moving our websites onto the new server. Everything is there and visible. It will be a few more weeks before we get all the kinks out.

It looks like we’ve sold our backlog of wool (2 years) plus this year’s clip to Kate Pokorny of the Yurt Alert. Lisa found her somehow. She’s building a yurt out of felted wool down in Jaffrey, NH. She was looking for wool that felts easily, and Icelandic wool is perfect for that. (We sell most of our roving to needle felters.) So as the official fleece skirter in this household, it looks like I’ll be skirting it over the next month, while we get ready for sugaring.

We’re also planning to run high tensile across the swamp while it is frozen. Our hope is even our evil sheep will not tangle with a hot wire while they’re actually standing in water. We would then be able to keep our sheep up the road, while keeping birds behind the house.

Fair warning: This post is heavy geek. The Net is a big part of how we’re trying to make the farm work. Having sites that stay up and a connection that doesn’t suck is as important as getting state meat inspection back. If it’s going to cause your eyes to glaze over, just pretend I wrote about tensioning my sawmill blade and move on.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been paying a hideous price for a T-1 connection, because, at least as of 2007, it was completely impossible to do my job as a software developer using satellite: Skype didn’t work, and I would lose signal just when I needed to put out a patch. There are no other broadband options here. (Canada and Australia have lower population densities than the US and far better broadband coverage. Tell me again that the US is a first world country.) One of the ways I kept expenses down was by hosting The Vast Richards Web-Empire (TM) on a box under my desk. Unfortunately we had continuous reports of people who could not reach our server, possibly because I never really got reverse DNS working.

Supposedly satellite is better now, and in any case I’m not currently developing from home, so we’re reverting to satellite. This means hiring hosting again. The price of that has gotten better. I’m paying $15/month for “unlimited everything”, including multiple domains. We’ll see of course what the actual bandwidth is. Add $80 for the satellite and I’m still well over $500/month ahead.

Because we were bloggers before blog was a word we use WordPress for pretty much everything. We’re also now standardizing on the Thesis theme from DIYThemes. Unfortunately despite all the progress since my first WordPress install at version 0.7, I’m still having issues. Thesis, especially with the Openhook plugin keeps all sorts of stuff in the database rather than theme files. It’s not in the custom files on the old box, but it’s not reaching the new box when I do a backup/restore. Far far scarier, Mmmmonadnock.com is losing its’ last two entries, the two written after I switched it to Thesis. I’ve tried twice, and the result is the same. Of course the old box still thinks it’s mmmmonadnock.com, so I can’t just cut and paste those entries, and all the custom code to the new one.

Ending on a positive note, here’s the workaround. Both WordPress and J. Random Hosting expect you to have DNS set up to point to them from second one, with no actual expectation that you’re migrating a running site but might want to make some changes on the way. How can you actually make this work? Load all your files and restore the database on your new box. Then have two workstation machines. Set the hosts file on one to resolve mysite.com to the new box, while leaving global DNS pointed at the old site. Then use Remote Desktop or your OS’s equivalent to cut and paste from the old server to the new. When you finally like it, change the nameservers. Don’t forget to count the entries.

I keep hearing all my friends making resolutions for the New Year that involve getting fit. I think they are doing it all wrong, though. Why not volunteer at a local farm instead of joining a gym?

There are small farms popping up all over urban areas, or just a short drive away. Farms are very labor intensive, especially if you are trying not to use chemicals and pesticides. Weeds need pulling, animals need to be moved more frequently, which means more fences and paddocks are necessary.

We have Tamworth pigs, who root up lots of stumps and rocks. All of those need to be moved. Remember? That’s where all of New England’s stonewalls came from: out of their fields.

I like to trade good food for good work. Take home some pork or lamb chops! The first ones are always free.

It would be better for your local food shed to help produce the food you eat.

You would get good, healthy exercise, and it would have real, tangible results.

You’d meet your neighbors.

You would help small farmers thrive.

I don’t care what time of the year it is, there’s lots of stuff that needs to be done.

Stay out of the gym and off the boring treadmill. Go out to a farm right now and haul water, burn brush piles, stay hay, shovel pathways, shovel manure, start seeds.

It’s sustainable. It’s good for your world. It’s local. It’s hot. It’s in.

We’re making our own sausage for the first time this year. Last time we had the slaughterhouse do it. We were not impressed. We weren’t impressed with the smoked meat either, but they have a new smokehouse, and we have to take one step at a time.

In the spirit of one step at a time, we bought a bunch of different seasoning mixes from The Sausage Source in Hillsboro. So far we’ve made hot and sweet Italian sausage, hot and sweet breakfast sausage and bratwurst. We still have spices for kielbasa, hot dogs and liverwurst.

We also have spices for andouille, hot and sweet, but that’s smoked. We like our Alton Brown home-brew smoker, but, well, he lives in Atlanta. We got it to work at 23 degrees (-5C) by wrapping it in insulation. Today the temperature fell all day and was at 5 (-15C) when the sausage would have been ready to smoke. Add in a howling wind, and that poor little hot plate was just outclassed. We may give it a try later in the week when it’s supposed to be a bit warmer. If it doesn’t work, we’ll freeze the ground pork and make the sausage when we can smoke it.

We bought a Porkaert meat grinder, also from The Sausage Source, last year after the KitchenAid meat grinder attachment failed miserably. We’ve been using that, and it does a fine job for the second grind, but there are some issues with using it to stuff the casings. It’s very easy to rip the casing as you put it on. The actual stuffing really needs three hands. It’s very slow compared to grinding, and you have stuff the last three links worth by hand with meat you pull out of the grinder, which is even slower than using the grinder. Finally, it’s tin coated steel, not stainless. It’s safe enough as long as you’re careful, but I question whether health department, here or in the EU, is going to allow it to be used in a commercial kitchen. I mention the EU because it comes from the Czech Republic.

There are way too many negatives in the paragraph above. It’s built like a battleship–the way American stuff was made before 1960. As a grinder, which is what it is, it rocks. And because the Czech Republic uses Korunas rather than Euros, it’s barely more expensive than the one fourth as good Chinese alternative.

What actually sent us to the Sausage Source was buying a semi-pro vacuum sealer, after the home model we bought 5 years ago turned out to be a piece of junk. It cost a pretty penny, and the bags for it are in the 40-50 cent range depending on size, but it works. Vacuum sealing keeps far longer than butcher paper. Because we have Ginny as well as a gilt, and Ginny weighed over 500 pounds and each gilt was about 270, it’s about twice the amount of pork that we usually get at slaughtertime. It took us about six hours to seal all the meat we have. The only time we had any trouble at all was when a particularly sharp bone sticking out would pierce the bag as the vacuum started sucking. We learned to position the meat so that was less likely to happen pretty quickly.

I learned the hard way not to vacuum seal uncooked meat balls. Today we pre-froze the breakfast sausage patties (two hours on the balcony) and that worked well. I think I’ve figured out how to freeze the rest of the sausage. I’ve no clue what we do when Lisa picks up the smoked meat on Monday. Time to Freecycle and Craigslist for another freezer.