I’ve been a long term reader of Mother Earth News magazine and have most of the issues back to #1. Well, now I’m a writer in M.E.N. too. They republished my What Good Is A Pig article that discussed the cuts of pork and beyond. There’s a FaceBook page where people are making comments. Feel free to go join in.
Be sure to make any adjustments to pledges or rewards selections now. If you’re pledging extra to add-on extra goodies, my upcoming book, the butchering or farm tour videos, the commemorative T-shirt, patch and stickers, small tusk and such I’ll be asking which you would like when it comes time to do the shipping survey. Details in Update #44 and Update #39.
If you would like to save big by buying in bulk now’s the time to upgrade to a whole pig which we can ship to you one quarter at a time to save your freezer space. Share your reward with a friend as several people are doing to further save space and get in on the bulk pork savings of half and whole pigs as described in Update #47.
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The pastures are starting to green up and look wonderfully lush. The animals are loving it. Yesterday Hope and I planted about an acre of pumpkins as well as beets and turnips which will be food for the pigs come late fall and winter. Our soil used to be poor, thin and not very fertile. Typical northern mountain soil. One of the great things about having livestock is they improve the soil with their manure and urine. The sun shines, the rain falls, the plants grow, the animals eat the plants and about 80% returns back to the pastures as organic matter which improves the soil for the next round of growth. We also plant legumes like clover to suck nitrogen and carbon out of the air that adds more organic matter and natural nutrients so we never have to buy fertilizers. It is all part of the natural cycle of life. It works.
We’re down to under 48 hours on the Kickstarter project. We’re getting to that point of last chance to adjust pledges and rewards choices as well as making sure you have the extra $20 included for any international shipments (Goodies only). Don’t forget about the option to add the book or DVDs, to add bacon to meat packages as well as to add the commemorative patch and T-shirt which can be added to any shipping packages.
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We’ve made our goal, thank you to everyone! We made our second goal too! Several people have suggested a special commemorative T-shirt, patch or pin that would be available just to backers by adding a few more dollars to cover the cost and then ship with the existing packages, thus keeping the shipping costs down. A couple of people also asked about a different picture for the T-shirt, maybe with a sow and piglets rather than the pork cut chart. Several people have also asked about getting a small tusk in their package. Can do to all of these requests!
I’ve combined both of these requests into a few new final tiers which can be added onto any shipping package on our Kickstarting the Butcher Shop project.
There are a number of old sayings that sum up roughly to “you don’t want to see how sausage or laws are made.” Perhaps this is true if poor ingredients are used but it need not be that way. You can use top quality ingredients and you’ll get top quality sausage, and perhaps laws too.
When we make sausage we use good meat. There are no snouts, ears, eyeballs, organs or the like in the mix. We do not grind in the bones. Rather we use quality de-boned ham, shoulder and other delicious pork. One sausage maker with over 50 years of experience told me that our hot dogs taste so good because we use good quality meat as the foundation. Good ingredients means delicious hot dogs, kielbasa and other sausages.
I’m not going to tell you how to make sausage here, that’s another discussion and there are some excellent books listed at the end of this article. What several people on the Kickstarter asked about are what are the various types of sausage we make now and what kinds of sausage do we plan to make once our on-farm meat processing facility is completed so that is today’s topic.
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We are now in our last week of our Kickstarting the Butcher Shop at Sugar Mountain Farm. We made our initial goal of $25,000 for the butcher shop equipment thanks to all of you!
We made our second goal of an additional $5,000 for pouring the abattoir tower. Thank you, again!!
Some people have asked how high can we go? The sky’s the limit. There are more goals ahead such as pouring the floors of the abattoir, the roof of the abattoir, etc. Help spread the word to as many people as possible in this last week so as to raise additional funds for the higher levels where all backers can get additional rewards added on to rewards packages such as more sausage, hot dogs, bacon and other Goodies.
Win: T-shirts, mugs, DVDs, books plus more meat and other goodies on rewards tiers.
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Wow! Thank you everyone! Not only is the butcher shop funded but we now have enough to pour the concrete for the next section of that abattoir tower. This brings us one step closer to on-farm slaughter in addition to on-farm butchering (meat cutting & sausage making).
Hitting the $30K goal means that everyone at the $25 or higher level by the end of our project (May 15th) will get an extra FarmImage Goodie. If you wish to increase your pledge you can do so at any time this week and still get the extra Goodie.
New Goal: $35K green line to pour the floor and some partitions of the abattoir. I’ve been experimenting with the shipping and found I can pack a little more meat in the box. If we can get to that height I’ll include extra bonus sausage for all meat backers at the $65 level and above plus a mystery goodie for everyone at levels $30 and above.
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I always wanted to be a farm mom! -Holly
