By mutual consent, our dealings have quickly moved from cash deals, to one of barter. The going rate for a couple of pheasants has become a bottle of our own 'Morfa Nefyn Orchard' apple juice. The arrangement has proven to be a beneficial one for both parties and I've enjoyed being able to go up to the shooting lodge and sucking in the atmosphere. In my younger days I did lots of beating and maybe next season, I'll return to it, goodness knows I need the exercise.
During my frequent visits to the shoots shooting lodge, I saw that he's been keeping a wild boar sow and her ten white piglets. " She's nasty" the keeper told me " she's had me up in the air a couple of times and I want her gone as soon as the piglets are weaned."
I mentioned to him at sometime or other, that we make our own sausages here at home and on Sunday I had a phone call from him to say that he'd had her slaughtered and would I turn the whole sow into sausage? Rather than lose face, I said yes but just so long as he delivered her skinned and boned. The deal was that we'd go half and half, he'd supply the pig and I would supply the labour, the sausage skins and the seasoning. It seemed like a good deal at the time.
The pig was delivered at 8.am yesterday morning. Eh hum! Note that the skin appears intact and that the bones are most definately in situ. As a non butcher and a maker of sausage from smallish amounts of belly pork, what ensued was a long arduous day that didn't finish until way after 6.00pm.
It was all hands to the pump with my wife Karen and our youngest son having to skin and then take the pork off the bone before we could actually start making the sausage. Robert just happened to be throwing a piece of pig skin at me as I was taking this picture.
Hours later, we ended up with 31 kg of meat ready to run through the mincer.
We ran all the meat through the mincer twice and with our small electric hobby machine, it took an eternity. We had to mix in the seasonings before we could start filling the sausage stuffer time after time and get the sausages flowing freely. What a job! I don't think any of us ever want to see a sausage again! Fortunately, Karen is a dab hand at linking sausages and can do it without having to think. You should see some of the knitting patterns that she follows.
Our day was an extremely long one and I don't think we'd ever undertake it again with the equipment that we have. Here's half the sausages that we made, the gamekeeper will be picking them up in the morning.
Needless to say, we thought that we deserved a nice sausage dinner last night.
Over the next few weeks, I'll try and find the time and the space to put some of the super recipes that I've picked up onto my blog.
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