January xmas finish

Here is a sneek peak of my January finish, this is for my mum who is an avid tea drinker way before they discovered benefits like anti oxidents etc.

I have come to learn two things whilst making this M--R-- (just in case mum is reading this).

1) I spent more time trying to find my sewing stuff than it took to actually make it. As this is the first for the year, I am hoping that by the finish I should be more organized in this area.

2) That it is time to have my eyes checked. I am pretty sure that ones vision shouldn't blurr when doing close work like sewing.

Until the next deadline............ Happy sewing ..............

Creative days .....

Yesterday it was our youngest does 1st birthday. Feeling the need to celebrate this special day DD wanted to make a gift for "Honey", deciding on a collar, she ventured into her room (never know what hidden gems one will find in there LOL) found a packet of scoobys and started plaiting strands together, when she had three, she then plaited them together like a braid and hot glued it to a collar. I'd say she has been creative and resourceful.

On the farm we are still taking our babysteps and I am hoping that come the end of the month one of these jobs will be completed (stay tuned). All our focus is now on preparing/finishing off the garlic for sale. It is a big task and with the help of our eldest son and family have made a great start. So it's back to the garlic shed for me.

I hope your summer holidays are productive and treating you well ............

Firing up the smoker .......................

On Saturday we decided that it was high time we used our smoker for the first time. It has been set up for a few months now and for one reason and then another we hadn't used it until now. So the wood was sort and a fire lit.

The day before all the meat is minced together ( 6kg pork shoulder & 1kg beef mince) to this we added garlic (of course) black pepper and the smallest amount of preserve. It is all mixed and then left in the fridge overnight.

Our Polish neighbours came the next morning to help us with the actual sausage making and we got to use our newly acquired mincer. The sausage skins were rinsed off and filled to make sure there weren't any holes, the meat was then made into balls to fit into the mincer hopper. Filling the sausage skins is a two person job, one to operate the mincer and one to handle the actual sausage.

Once all the meat was done the sausage was then placed onto the smoking rack and then placed into the smoker which has been heating while we've been inside making the sausages.

The actual time to smoke polish sausage depends on the quantity of sausage and outside weather, for us we were looking at a time frame of about 3 hrs. During this time the fire is checked periodically.

This is what the sausage looks like when it has been smoking for about an hour and a half.

When the sausage is finished, we then took it inside and washed it to remove any ash etc and then it was wiped with paper towel and left on the bench to cool, of course after everyone had a taste test that is ........ What was left we placed in bags and placed in the freezer. It is a time consuming task but well worth it.