Charcuterie chez nous

4th December
This morning early the farmer returned to do the butchering of the pig. James, Lizzy and I all got up early to watch the proceedings and very interesting it was too. I hadn’t realized there would be so much meat on her as she was such a small wee thing, but by the end of the morning we had about 50 pork chops, about 8 joints of varying sizes, two fillet mignons; which are my favourite for making the little round ‘medallions’ of pork, bacon slices, 12 jars of paté and 76 sausages.

There were lots of other odd bits which I haven’t a clue what to do with…trotters, liver and the like, but for now I have bunged them in the freezer. I suspect the dogs will end up enjoying them. Lizzy took an active interest in all this and helped turn the wheel of the sausage machine and then count the sausages and bag them. She’s really not very squeamish at all…just like her mother. By contrast, the boys didn’t even come downstairs but as usual, stayed at their computer screens. However, they were happy to sample the sausages at lunchtime (which were delicious by the way).

As frequently happens, our formal educating seems to have gone by the wayside – at least, as far as the children are concerned. I, on the other hand, am having a full and varied education in farming matters!