Bringing Home Bacon (and Venison)

A. is even now driving to a farm on the other side of the lake to pick up a whole pig. In boxes, I mean, not a whole live pig. This is a pig I ordered about four months ago. I gave the farm my butchering instructions, and then I never heard from them again. After a month or so, I wrote them off as flakes and forgot about it.

Imagine my surprise when Smitty (yes, that is his real, honest-to-God name) called last Friday to tell me my pork was ready to be picked up. Surprise and delight, because REAL HAM. That pink, wet stuff you can buy at the grocery store? I'm sorry, that is not real ham. It is a hideous, nasty, completely unappetizing imposter that I can't even eat anymore.

But real ham . . . oh, real ham. I love it so. We're having ham steaks for dinner tonight, and I am unreasonably excited about it.

As if you couldn't tell from the previous two paragraphs.

In addition to the 200 pounds of pork that will shortly be residing in my freezer, we also have a deer hanging in the shed right now. It was the result of A. coming home from work early yesterday and deciding to hunt the last couple of hours before dark. He shot a six-point buck in the gully and dragged it home just as it was getting dark.

Cubby was very excited and tried to commandeer the gutting knife and hatchet (used to hack through the tough rib cage). He had to content himself with his flashlight, however, with which he very helpfully illuminated the deer so A. could see to gut it. Charlie stood there contemplating the deer. He tried to grab its nose, but I stopped him. Not that a dead deer's nose was going to hurt him or anything, it just seemed wrong somehow. He did like the antlers, though.

With the aid of his car's headlights illuminating the shed, A. got the thing hung up to age for a week or so before we butcher it.

Oh! AND! The MiL came home yesterday with the exciting news that she stumbled across some kind of food market at work where she found two organic kraut cabbages for me. I've been looking EVERYWHERE for non-pesticide-laden cabbage to make sauerkraut, and failing. We usually grow enough cabbage for sauerkraut, but this year the cabbages pretty much just rotted from all the rain we got early in the season. And apparently no one else grows it (organically) to sell. Except this one guy the MiL happened to find.

So pork, sauerkraut, and venison. We're ready for winter.