This Sustainable House

Posts Tagged ‘Sustainable’

One of the activities that I throughly enjoy is preserving. Be that storing peaches in light syrup, making an apricot jam (fantastic with a few vanilla beans) or brewing up a stunning batch of chutney. Preserving is a great way to store away the seasons excesses, and to impress visitors with their “take home” packs.

However there is a whole branch of preserving that I haven’t really ventured into, that of charcuterie or preserving of meats. Charcuterie originally referred to the production of pork products such as sausages, bacon & ham. However a more modern meaning is the production of meat products from any sort of animal.

Of course charcuterie isn’t just preserving, after all fresh pork sausages certainly qualify, however many of the products that are produced do in fact have a preserving effect… think hung salamis or legs of ham.

I decided to dip my toes into the water, so to speak, with producing my own bacon. Bacon was chosen as a starting point as it is one of those iconic meats imbued with so much flavor and memory. In fact, when I was a vegetarian (many moons ago) it was bacon that I truly missed not fillet steak. Also, bacon is a fairly easy meat to prepare requiring little specialized equipment or ingredients.

To make bacon all you need to do is coat pork (traditionally belly or loin) in a curing mixture allowing this mixture to draw out the excess moisture which could cause the meat to rot. This can then be sliced as it is, it’s called green bacon at this stage (Dr Seuss would be proud), or you can smoke it to add additional flavor.

The curing mix that I am using as 2kg pickling salt (don’t use table salt which has iodine added), 200g dark brown sugar, and ~1 tablespoon freshly cracked pepper. These are throughly mixed together and then handfuls are rubbed over the meat paying particular attention to cover the whole surface, including all the nooks and crannies. You can add saltpeter (Sodium Nitrate) into your curing mix, though I have chosen not to add this ingredient due to the link between heated nitrates, nitrosamines and cancer.

Once this is done, place the pork in a non-reactive container in a cool place. In 24hrs pour off any accumulated liquid, re-salt, and the replace. Basically you do this each day for between 5-14 days, depending on how salty you like your bacon.

Once the curing process is completed, then soak the pork in clean water for two hours. Discard the water and soak again for another hour in fresh water. Finally, hang the side somewhere cool for 1-2 days so that a pellicle can form. The pellicle is like a skin that’ll help preserve the meat for longer and allow an “attachment” point for smoke molecules, if you go down that path.

At this stage your bacon is good to eat as green bacon. Slice it, and enjoy!!!

Update: The very first streaky bacon side (made from pork belly) was tasted today. It has a very different taste to shop bought bacon and is quite salty. This isn’t terribly surpirsing as I salted it for 8 days, so the next belly will be done for 5-6 which should lessen the salt content. The one thing that you will notice with your home made bacon though is that it doesn’t shrivel away to nothing in the pan. Apparently this has to do with the copious quantities of water that is pumped into commercially produced bacon which is then released during cooking. In this case there isn’t any water to lose so it stays about the same size as the

Well it has now been a couple of months since the pigs first arrived at TSH (see Making a Pig of Oneself) but today the day finally came when it was time for them to move on.

They have done a stirling job digging and cleaning that garden area as the video below attests. The next step, after processing the pigs, will be to erect some temporary irrigation and then sow the area to green manure. This will grow for another couple of months, before another 5 piglets are brought in the to do the job for us again. The garden area should then be ready for planting in early spring.

The video below shows the wonderful work the pigs have done for us, and the end result of the last few months. I would like to warn those who find animal carcasses disturbing that there are images of the carcasses in this video. However there is a warning page allowing to you exit the video prior to the scene of the carcasses. There is no footage of the slaughter… that’s a private, and definitely unpleasant, moment.

The pigs were all slaughtered and dressed on-site, the advantage of which is that there was no transport stress whatsoever. It was just a normal day for the pigs until that rapid killing blow (by bullet). The downside of dressing them at home was that we had a few technical issues with the hot water production, leading to the animals having to be skinned… no crackling from our pigs. Not the end of the world, and will probably do our health a world of good anyhoo…

One of the disadvantages of living in a rural area, at least in Australia, is the flies. They lay their eggs in animal manure, and as a result can be legion in an area in which one is surrounded by animals. In the case of TSH we have the cattle, pigs and chickens, as well as the sheep & horses surrounding the property.

To add to the problem, the flys aren’t just annoying but can cause issues with the stock through biting. We therefore need to control them.

Control can take one of three possible routes, or a combination thereof. These protocols are chemical control (pesticides), trapping and biological control. At TSH, chemical control is always the last resort, or act of desperation, and therefore doesn’t apply to this scenario. So we are left with trapping and biological control.

Before I go any further, let me point out an important fact… I’m a lazy sod! I don’t believe in doing something if someone, or something else, would like to do it for me. I am therefore naturally inclined towards biological control. In this case, Biological control will take two paths. Read the rest of this entry »

Every weekend I set myself a task to complete around TSH that keeps the vision moving in the right direction. Sometimes this task is large, such as fencing a new paddock, but at other times it can be quite small such as improving an existing system. This weekend, my task was to build a new vege garden using the wicking bed system.

A wicking bed is a marvellously efficient garden design in which you water from below. It is basically a giant self-watering pot in which you water via a filling tube. The water creates a reservoir under the soil of the bed, and the water then ‘wicks’ up to water the plants. The major advantage of the system is that there is no free water on the surface, so evaporation is minimal.

At TSH we have two beds, both located on the back verandah, which have been designated to be wicking beds. And this weekend I created one of the beds. The location of the beds was chosen so as to allow year round growing (it’s under the eaves so shouldn’t be too effected by frost) as well as to be close to the kitchen (virtually in zone 0, if you are permaculturally inclined). It should also help reduce the amount of reflected sunlight into the entertaining area during summer which should help make this area feel much more comfortable.

And let’s not forget… produce a mass of picking greens, herbs and other vegetables for the kitchen.

A video-essay of the building of this bed can be found on Green Phoenix Permaculture.

I’ll post an update in a few weeks around how it is going. Below are some time staged photos… click on them to zoom.

Wicking Bed (Week 1)

In an earlier post I mentioned that I had created a pair of ‘sacrificial paddocks’ for the cattle. Well recently the cattle have been moved out of these paddocks, and one has been sown to a spring pasture mix (comprised of forage brassica, plantain and clover). This video highlights how the paddocks were sown, without the use of any mechanical apparatus apart from a rake, and how they are growing.

And they said it couldn’t be done…

The 'Gang' in their new Paddock

In an earlier video post I talked about the paddock clearing operation in order to create a new 0.5 acre paddock at TSH. Well the job has been done, due in no small part to a wonderful WWOOFer Laetitia and the help of a particularly tenacious neighbour.

As you can see from the photo on the right, the cattle have taken to their new homes like ducks to water, though it is obvious that I need to have a few more ‘lessons’ with the tape measure… those posts were supposed to fit a 14′ gate between them!

Anyhow, the paddock really is quite wonderful and will, I’m sure, be a grand new home for our small herd. Must be like a holiday for them…

The next step is to prepare the adjoining 0.5 acre paddock, followed by the lane way to the diary shed (also to be built). We then have two additional areas to clear to set this ‘complex’ up. Anyone have any excess energy?

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In 2003 Joel Salatin, of Polyface Farms, wrote an article of the above name. The article was written for Acres USA and can be found here. As much as I dislike ‘stealing’ his title (or is that research under the western academic system?) I have to admit that I haven’t yet come up with a title that sums this topic up more appropriately. My apologies Joel.

The point of this post is the raft of beaurucratically inspired idiocy that seems to pervade the ‘lucky country’. This is all the legislation, guidelines, audits, notifications, regulations, inspections, disallowable instruments, and general silliness by which the paternal state ‘protects’ our food supply. But who is this really protecting? The Consumer? Or vested interests in the industry? I am beginning to think it is the latter rather than the former. Read the rest of this entry »