A sunshiny day in the first week of 2017
Little red sweet potatoes warming up in a bit of olive oil
Kate dug red sweet potatoes the second of January, and we set them in the dark to cure for a few weeks. These little things were mostly only an inch thick and five or so long because I failed to plant them early enough. But tasty, damn!
On January six, I took the life of a free-living, innocent wild hog, fearfully and wonderfully made. One doesn't just casually squeeze the trigger of a .243 rifle while it's aimed at another life.
That same day I butchered it cleanly and ground up all the meat, half going to pan sausage and the other half to link sausage we smoked over oak and peach wood a couple days later. In a light drizzle, we kept the oak coals going all day, adding every now and then pieces of green peach wood just recently pruned from their trees. The result was the most delicious sausage we've ever enjoyed. Spicy, smokey, and raised free on wild grasses, acorns, roots, fruits, and tubers.
Wild hog link sausage smoking
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| Hind quarter of the pig |
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| The pig |
Six lambs were born the second week of the month, two sets of twins and two to two mothers. The first ewe to deliver did so shortly before sunrise, but by the time I found her an hour or two later, one of the lambs was dead. Still slightly warm, but limp and lifeless, his death left us without a known cause.
These two little ones below were only hours old and as healthy as one could hope for.
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| Birthday twins (January 9) |
Our blackberries have left us disappointed with their flavor, so we're trying again, this time along the east fence of the sheep field. We've tilled the sandy soil and amended it with sulfur, peat moss, and compost from the highly organic soil beneath the Boulders.
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| Making the bed (for blackberries) |
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| Looking north across a foggy pond--January 16, 8:30 a.m. |
