Pigs go wild

The pigs went outside today for the first time. I have to say I have done easier things in my time!! In the end we got them out and as you can see in the videos they are loving their new home.

New Arrivals

Piggie course is full

The course I was talking about in the last post is now full! Anyone else looking to do it drop me an email and I will let you know if we when we are running the next one. Speaking of pigs we are still waiting to get our new pigs which is cutting it fine for Christmas hams!! I reckon we should be ok as long as we get them in the next week or so. I will keep you posted.

I have been doing a nice bit of fishing recently including some night time seatrouting with Ben. Ben caught his first seatrout which he was most excited about. So excited that he shouted the place down. I was sure he had fallen in and that I would see him floating by any minute. I dont have any pictures of the seatrout but instead a nice brown trout I caught on the barrow.

Pigs are on their way

This year's pigs will be arriving shortly and we have been busy preparing for them. As always they live in high style with our patented pallet house! Me and Graham spend the other morning building the house that will soon be the home to three piglets. I will be running courses this year on processing your pig. The idea of the course is to show people how to make their own, sausages, salami, parma ham, bacon etc. The course will be run over one day and is strictly on a first come first served basis. Booking being taken now!!!

Redcurrant Jelly

OK so the summer hols went on a little bit longer than expected! I have tons and tons of stuff to stick on here about the wedding, the stag, the honeymoon as well as the usual stuff at home.

Here is my recipe of the classic accompaniment to venison, terrine, pate and the like

It couldn't be easier to make. Just get equal quantities of both redcurrants and sugar. Boil up the fruit until it realises it's juice (about ten minutes) and then add in the sugar. Boil for eight minutes before straining through muslin and into sterilised jars. Simple as that!

Tom Doorley digs the Bounty!

Been meaning to put this up. I recieved this message from food writer Tom Doorley about barrowsbounty.com.
"Hiya Liam. This looks really good. Keep up the good work. You have inspired me to start blogging again".
I must be doing something right!!! Good man Tom!

Parma sucess!........... at last!

Those of you who have been following my blog for the last year will no doubt recall last year's parma disaster! (For those of you that haven't here it is http://barrowsbounty.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-first-disaster.html)

Enough to say it was not a roaring success. Thankfully this year things seem to be on the up. Our hams have been hanging in a stable since October and one was finally cut down from the rafters this week. Needless to say it didn't look pretty but was scrubbed down with vinegar to remove all unpleasantness and then ceremoniously cut up ready for eating.

We were a but sceptical about eating it after what happened last year and I cant say I am proud of what happened next but needs must. George our working cocker was hanging round like a bad smell once he got a whiff of the ham and at the same instant both Sandy and I looked at each other and it was decided. George would be our parma Guinea Pig! He seemed keen, if not a little suspicious as to why he was getting such a treat but didn't look the gift horse in the mouth! We monitored him closely over the next few hours and can report that there seemed to be no ill affects other than an almighty thirst.

That was enough convincing for me and after waiting for two years I got my first taste of my own air dried ham! What a revelation. It was super and is now being had with brekkie (with melon), lunch(on a sambo) and dinner (on a pizza). All the hard ache was worth while!

Plans for the year

Firstly sorry for the break in posting. I was in hibernation with Christmas and the snow!

I really just wanted to let you all know what the plans for the coming year are going to be.

I will be continuing to try and grow as much of our vegetables and fruit as possible. The pigs and laying hens will also feature along with trying to find as much wild food as possible.. A new departure will be chickens for the table. Me and a buddy of mine are going to raise some chickens for eating so I will keep you posted as to how we get on!

The big project for the year however is going to be our wedding which is happening in June. I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew here as I want to try and have all the food for the wedding either home grown produce or wild food! At 150 people it is by far the biggest challenge I have attempted in the garden and kitchen.

We are having a marquee and the idea is to have a relaxed homemade wedding with all our friends and family. The food (hopefully!!) will be some canapes of wild food followed by a whole spit roast pig with salads and vegetables from the garden and then some kind of seasonal dessert which will feature our eggs and fruit. God its a bit overwhelming when you actually write it all down!

I will post on here as to how I am getting on with the preperations, whether it be catching a wild salmon to growing the vegetables or trying to encourage the pig to grow so it is ready for June!!

The picture above is of me and George spending some man time on our local shoot which we have been doing quite a lot of while we have been away.

Parma Update

After last year's disaster with my homemade parma ham I thought I had better give proper attention to this year's one. Up until last week things had been going great. I lavished my ham with all the love a ham could ever want. He lived in the fridge for the first 30 days wrapped up in cling film while the cure worked it's way through the 8KGs of meat. It was then unwrapped and lovingly hung in the hot press for 3 days before being moved to what would have been it's final resting place in the spare room. It should have stayed there in the spare room for at least a month if not two before it would have been ready at a constant temperature of 15 degrees and 70% humidity. Alas this was not to be. After a couple of days a porky perfume started wafting from the spare room and although not unpleasant it certainly raised a few eyebrows from both my fiancee, Sandy and my gun dog, George. George was very enthusiastic about the origins of the new smell, Sandy less so. And so it was on day five that the parma ham had to find a new home.

After much thought it was decided that an unused stable would be the next best place for my prize ham. We built a vermin proof cage to stop any little beasts treating themselves to my prize ham before I get to sample it. It isn't the right temperature and it isn't the right humidity but I am hoping that the ham will be happy in it's new home and that in a few months I in turn will be happy with how my ham turned out.

Super Ted

To give you all a break from the piggy posts I thought I would tell you about a pretty cool Swedish fella with a Cork accent. He too is a bit of a pig fancier and has brought the art of spit roasting them to a new level.

I met Ted last year at an event he was doing the food for. There were not enough people to justify doing a whole pig so Ted improvised and cooked full sirloins of beef. They were absolutely fantastic. He also cooked a paella of rabbit and had some fantastic salads. His cooking is a breath of fresh air as is his enthusiasm for local organic produce. Ted has strong ties with Ballymaloe and shares many of the same values in his cooking.

His company is called Wildside Catering and his website is well worth a look at http://www.wildsidecatering.ie/

Success

I have to admit that I felt pretty smug this morning tucking into my bank holiday fry up. It consisted of eggs from the girls, a potato cake made with spuds from the garden and taking pride of place was out own dry cured bacon and our own sausages. Doesn't get much better than this. Makes all the hard work worthwhile!

Salami

What a week! It all been very porky around the place since the pigs came home last Wednesday. Over the next few posts I will show you what we have done with all the pork and how we try and preserve it for use over the winter.

First off is salami, we made 17kg of Chorizo and 34kg of two French types of dried sausage. One is smoked and will be ready in about a month and the other will take 6 months to mature. Between the lot we should be OK for salami for the whole year.

The way we make them is basically the same no matter what the variety, the only difference being the spices we add and if they are smoked or not. Some also take longer to mature.

We start off with the meat (We get the butcher to mince it for us as there is some hardship in trying to mince over 50kg of meat with a hand mincer!). This is lean minced pork and the back fat from a pig which is mixed thoroughly by hand. We then add in 2% salt by weight to the mince and fat mixture. You then add in whatever spices you want (chorizo would have lots of garlic and paprika, the French saucisson would have less garlic but have quatre espiece as the dominant flavour).

We stuffed the mixture into beef middles (Beef Intestines) and tied each salami off with a piece of string. It is important that they are as tight as possible because the salami will reduce in size by 40% and beyond. I then hung the salami in the spare room for a few days at room temperature before the saucisson went into the smoker for 3 or 4 days. It then joined it's pal the chorizo hanging up outside in Graham's porch. The chorizo will be ready in a week or so and the first of the French stuff will be ready in a month.

Next post I will tackle the parma ham. God I hope it turns out better than last year's one!

So Many Choices

Ok, now that the pigs are gone my mind starts thinking about all the porky delights we will be enjoying for the best part of the next year. After much consideration here is what we are going to do with the meat.

2 yards of prime roasting loin of pork:

3 yards of dry cured back bacon ( some smoked, some green)

1 yard of dry cured bacon joints

3 back legs for a parma ham style cure

3 back legs for nearly too big Christmas hams

6 yards of pancetta

About 120lb of toulouse sausage

about 60lb of saucisson and chorizo

loads of ribs

12 trotters

Seems a lot of meat processing when you write it down like that. I think I need a drink!

From Pigs to Pork

I am just back from bringing the pigs to the abattoir. We use a small local place which is only 10 mins away so there is little or no stress on the pigs. That to me is very important as the last thing I want is for the pigs to be stressed at the end after going to such effort trying to ensure they have lived happy, stress free lives up to that point.
I always feel bad about bringing the poor pigs to be killed. They don't have a clue and happily root around as we load them up. I suppose that's the whole point, that they are so unaware of what is about to happen and that they root around and do what comes naturally right up until the end. I don't take for granted my right to eat meat at all and I think I have an obligation to try and make sure if I do eat meat it comes from animals who have lived happy natural lives and that when the time does come they are killed in a quick, humane way which does not cause them any stress.
I will go back to collect the offal and carcasses this afternoon. I will drop the pigs over to the butcher and then make pate with the liver. I will also eat the kidneys as we try to have use everything except the oink with our own pigs. I think if you are going to kill an animal to eat the least you can do is treat the animal with respect and use every last bit of it.

Piggie Update

A few people have been asking me how the pigs are getting on. Well the answer is that they are getting on grand, getting good and fat! We have had a fairly incident free time with them so far apart from the breaking out phase they went through about a month ago. I am putting it down to adolescent testosterone (in the pigs, not me!) and not enough respect for the electric fence. Why they want to break out is beyond me as they have loads of room and greens in their own field. And to make matters worse when they do break out they don't do anything, just root around on the far side of the fence. It is porcine delinquency, nothing less.

Now is the time of year to figure out exactly what to do with the meat. I am thinking I will cure more of my meat this year than I did last year as I found it went further in the kitchen. Especially the chorizo and pancetta. I am less sure as to whether I should risk another whole leg on a parma ham after last year's disaster. We still have a while left before they go away so we have a while longer to consider the options

Bringing Home the Bacon

Finally the house is ready and we are able to pick up our new pigs, an easy enough task you would think. Not so! Last year we had a relatively easy time of it and everything went smoothly enough. Let me explain why this was not the case this time around!

First of all we had to pick the pigs up in Dublin and not 20 minutes down the road in Kilkenny like last time. We decided on a Gloucester old spot cross breed and plumped for three male weaners. Last year we had two saddlebacks which were a brother and sister. We went for the all male route this time in order to avoid any worries about a romance starting!

When we arrived at our destination Graham backed up the horse box close to the door of the stable where the piglets were housed. All we had to do now was entice the weaners up the ramp with a bucket of feed. They went everywhere except up the bloody ramp and then were joined by an escapee who wanted to come to Carlow with her three brothers. Eventually after a lot of pushing, shoving and squealing we had the correct three pigs in the back of the horsebox and were on our way.

Just as we were on our way out we were told that the pigs are not trained to an electric fence. Now to the uninitiated this may not seem like a big deal but believe me it can cause huge headaches. The thing is that pigs are born escapologists and ordinarily from very early on you keep them in a secure run which has a strand of electric wire inside the fence. The idea behind it is that the piglets learn to respect the wire while having a solid fence the other side of it to stop them running through the wire when they get a belt from it. Anyways we were not in a position to let our new pigs out into their run this evening or any evening until we trained them to the wire.

We got home at around 9pm having decided to call our three weaners Sausage, Bacon and Salami. It was also decided that we put the piglets into a stable for the night until we figure out the best way to introduce them to their run.

We built a run from old pallets around the house and tied a strand of electric wire around the inside of it. After two days of being in this the pigs were ready to be set free into their run and none of them have escaped so far touch wood!

They are starting to settle in now after a few days. I think they were pretty miserable for the first few days what with being away from their brothers and sisters and getting used to their new environment.

Piggie Accommodation

It's the time of year to start thinking about pigs again. I bought 3 weaners this year along with two pals. Now before they arrive there are a few bits and pieces that need to be done in preparation for them. People often ask "How do I get started in pigs" and to be honest pigs don't need too much TLC and are happy out just rooting around, one thing they do need however is a house of some kind and to be securely fenced in. As you can see from the below picture we buy our pig house flat pack from IKEA.

So a few days ago myself and Graham set about getting the pigs run set up for them. They need plenty of shade in their run and we have found the rougher a piece of ground it is the more the pigs like it as they have more to root up. They are amazingly efficient at clearing ground including briars, nettles and any other nasties you could mention and leave it weed free and ready for sowing. Our run is about a third of an acre and has plenty of trees. It is also pretty wild as you can see which is no harm at all.

We set about strimming around the exterior in order for us to be able to put up an electric fence. You are recommended to have 3 strands of electric wire or tape to keep the little escapologists in! Pigs might not look it but they are fast, super fast and sneaky along with it so be warned and make sure your fencing is up to the job!

Finally we built the house. This is a simple job and we use crates, stakes and roofing felt to create a "rustic" style pig house. The pigs don't seem to care mind you so long as it is warm and keeps the rain and wind out. We will be picking the pigs up in the next few days so fingers crossed that it will go smoothly.

My First Disaster

OK, that may not be 100% accurate, I have had other mini disasters like my tomatoes and courgettes last year, but nothing really serious. That all changed yesterday I am afraid when I finally cut down my first ever homemade parma ham. This particular ham used to belong to our pig called "Sausage", so it had a certain sentimentality attached to it.

I will admit that I had my doubts as to whether everything was OK with the ham, but I thought at worst I might just lose some of it. When I cut it down yesterday, 9 months after we hung it up all that changed. First of all there were maggots happily living underneath the double layer of muslin I had the ham wrapped in. Trying to be optimistic I said " It could still be grand if we just cut a little away where the maggots have been chomping. How wrong I was. The picture above shows the sight that greeted me when I cut into my precious ham. Needless to say the air turned blue!

We thought we had done everything right and in fairness all our other attempts at charcuterie turned out great. However as you can see this was a complete disaster. The basic idea with this kind of ham is very simple, you bury it in salt for a set period and then hang it up somewhere nice and breezy for months on end. Where we went wrong I reckon is not burying it in the salt for long enough. They say up to about a month for a big leg, but I only had mine in for 15 days. The reason for this is that I had read online that if you leave it in for a month it will be a bit salty when you come to eat it. Big mistake! The salt is what preserves it. So next year I will put it in the salt for longer. In the meantime though I will practice with some bought pork, maybe a loin and see how I get on. I certainly don't want to waste another full ham by getting it wrong.

As I was cleaning up after the surgery on the ham I looked out the window and was greeted by this sunset. I suppose even with the odd porky disaster life here isn't all that bad!

Piggies

Following on from the hens and George let me introduce the pigs to you. Me and my pig buddy Graham keep a few pigs each year for our own use. I wont lie to you it is a bit of hassle, not cheap, they are buggers to move anywhere, they eat you out of house and home, they do bite but on the flipside they just taste so good! We name ours which was against all advice but we tried not to lose focus on why we were keeping them, and so it came to be that they were called Sausage and Bacon!

This post is really just to give you an idea of what we do with them but over the summer I hope to give you a blow by blow account of how things go this year.
Essentially the idea is simple you buy a few weaners at 8 or 10 weeks old and you fatten them all summer and kill them in late autumn or early winter(just in time for Christmas!). You then have pork and porky products nearly all year long. We are still enjoying them now nearly 8 months since we killed our first pig and there is still a Parma ham hanging up in Graham’s porch that may or may not be ok. More of our tales of woe with the Parma ham in a later post.

We don’t kill them at home but take them to the local abattoir and they give us back the pork a few days later. We then turn it into all sorts of things. We make our own sausages, bacon, Christmas hams, Parma hams, chorizo, saucisson, pancetta, pate, you name it we have given it a shot. Some things have gone a bit tits up but I couldn’t say anything was unpleasant, just not what we expected. We usually draft in some help from friends for our "Pig Weekend" and have a big pig party to celebrate the life of Sausage and Bacon, almost like an Irish wake! The menu is predominantly porky as you can imagine however last year even a veggie managed to get in. She didn’t complain much although I am not sure there was much for her to eat!

So that’s it for now on the piggies. I will keep you posted on how we are getting on with the new batch over the summer; no doubt there will be plenty of fun and games.
In the mean time here are some pics of last year's piggie adventure.