Friday and Saturday

This past Friday and Saturday some of the wonderful folks from our church (plus a family from GA who are working on getting up here) came to our place and helped us slaughter and butcher the rest of our pigs. We could not have done it without them!!!! Thank y'all so much!!!

Friday afternoon Daddy, Kyle, Luke, Lingo men, and various members of the Fish family slaughtered the three pigs, and hung them in the smoke house. The walk-in cooler is currently out-of-commission, but it was cold enough to leave the halves outside overnight.

Little Smoky was the first to go (Daddy thought he might be smarter than the others and runaway after the first shot).

They had all three done by 4:30pm, at the latest!

Friday evening Mr. Draper, and the Evans' pulled in. After everyone had eaten, there was some conversation, and refreshed our butchering memories with the Meat Man (he could not only use someone to redo the videos, but the website too!) video.

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Saturday morning Mama, Mrs. Evans, and Mrs. Fish started making a batch of soap, but I am not allowed to post any of the pictures Claire got of that process.

The men went out around 10:00am or so and started butchering.

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A few of us were happily occupied inside, where it was warm!

Sausage-maker extraordinaires!

The packaging table was kept pretty busy most of the time.

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Cuties!!!

Pictures from Thanksgiving week

Our last turkeys.

Now, I don't know about any of y'all, but I think dessert is almost the most important aspect of Thanksgiving Day! Uncle Craig brought this cake.

Aunt Lou brought a caramel pie!!! Homemade crust and everything!

Pecan pie.

CUSTARD!!!!!

Can you believe they still had energy to wrestle?!!

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Finishing one side!

Continuing another.

The view from inside.

Last night was the Hanging of the Greens service at Centertown United Methodist Church. As I mentioned in the previous post, Claire and I were a part of it. I think we performed okay, better than I expected really. Just a couple of days ago we had almost no voice!

Many churches hold a service of preparation for Christ's coming, which includes hanging greenery traditionally associated with everlasting life. Greens such as cedar for royalty, fir and pine boughs for everlasting life, holly symbolizing Jesus' death and ivy representing the resurrection are used.
--- UMC "What is Hanging of the Greens?"

Randomness

Yesterday was portrait day. Here's my favorite picture of the day:

He's so funny! We had such a hard time getting him to cooperate!

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Claire, our sharpshooter, got some pictures of this weekend.

Anna and Luke making breadsticks.

Two stooges.

Making salsa.

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There's one of these Fallow Deer (Dama dama) near us. It looks very odd! The antlers are palmate, like a moose, and they keep their spots. They are very small, between 100 and 150 pounds in the wild (up to 200 pounds domesticated). They're only three feet or so tall! Originally from the Middle East, Fallow Deer are common in much of Europe and are slowly being introduced by deer farmers to the United States. They are raised mainly for sport (they make unusual trophies, obviously.), and velvet antler which is sold to Asian cultures who use it in medicines.

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Well, tonight's the night! So it's not the night before Thanksgiving, but it's close enough. Our turkeys two remaining live turkeys are going to fulfill their purpose tonight, and one (at least) will go into the brine! We'll enjoy it Thursday. I will miss hearing their noise though; it's been pretty neat. There's always next year!

Here it is!!!

A very rough slide show of our weekend! I found Brad Paisley doing this song first, but Daddy put the original group doing it. I don't know if we could have found Brad Paisley's version anyway.

I don't think it's too bad for a first try. Sorry about the little bump in the music.

Guess What! Another post titled "Reformation Day/Weekend!"

Where to start?!!! That's always the problem!

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The setting: a few days before the big event.

The men and boys smoothing out last minute problems on the trebuchet.

Inserting a solid metal bar though the arm's axle (it was bending really bad without that).

One of the launches!

Raising the standard.

This is what we girls and ladies left every time the men launched the siege machine!

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Scene 2: The big day.

The gathering crowd.

The Heritage Quintet?

Traveling Germans.

You can just barely see our trolley set-up behind the tables.

The competition.

Changing frenzy. Plaid, plaid, everywhere plaid!

Kilted father and son.

Clan leader.

Everyone trying to find a spot on the trebuchet or in the truck bed for our grand entrance!

"For the Lord is our defense...."

My handsome bro. in his Scottish attire.

My other handsome brother in his Scottish garb.

Our men standing around preparing for the first launch.

Impromptu concert!

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All in all, the day went very well!

Pig Slaughtering: Start to Finish

Okay, here it is. The pictures aren't very good, but I think they are good enough. I'm not going to comment on them much though; I usually wasn't actually in the process.

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I don't what we'd do without the mule!

Luke got in there and helped a bit. You can just barely see him in this picture.

Again, the mule! This was way better than using the tractor. However, this made it necessary for them to skin and gut right behind the driveway!

Once Daddy and Kyle had skinned the underside of the pig, they pulled him up and skinned his backside.

Then they cut him open...

and dumped out the insides.

The pulley system.

Product #1. Quite good. Mild, though.