The last lamb we slaughtered was a difficult and frustrating process. The kill was quick and humane, but a single slip of the knife early in the dressing process resulted in slicing the achilles tendon and dropping the carcass, then a difficult skinning, which in turn delayed evisceration, resulting in the stomach falling and rupturing. We were able to preserve the harvest but it was a very reactive process, trying to trouble shoot problems after they had already arisen.
The second ram we did last weekend. I had to do the slaughter on Friday night after work, as the days were too warm to allow it to hang all day. Someday we will build a walk-in cooler, but not until we are producing enough volume of meat (or have enough friends producing enough meat) to make it worth our while. In the meantime, unless it is going to 40 degrees or less overnight, we aren’t hanging a carcass. Ideally we would have planned births so that slaughter happened only in the winter, and then we could get several days of hanging at 35 degrees or below, but so far we haven’t got the hang of that. Alternatively, we could keep the rams over the summer to next winter and butcher them at 20 months old, as hogget rather than lamb.
This year we are doing neither. We anticipate another droughty summer, and don’t need two more mouths to feed, with a cow-calf pair, and two ewes with lambs (assuming Eunice lambs successfully).
Anyway…
The new setup worked great. I started late, it was chilly but not too cold, and I knew from the start it was going to be a long night. I had just re-watched the Pasture to Plate Home Butchery class from Brandon Sheard on School of Traditional Skills, and I tightened up all my techniques, following as closely as possible. The dark actually helped because I couldn’t see everything so I had to proceed more slowly and methodically feeling my way through the fascia planes. The result was a very clean carcass with the fells almost completely intact, all the subcutaneous fat intact, and a very clean hide. If we were in a position to tan it, it would hardly need any scraping at this point. Of course it also took two hours. Brandon makes it look so easy.
You might not be able to see it well, but the fells (the twitch muscles along the side of the flanks) are almost completely intact.
Just shy 45 Lbs hanging weight.
The butchering the following day went much more smoothly as well. It was complicated by my oldest helper having to go to the Sewing and Stitchery expo…
Showing off their projects from 4H last year. So I was left with my littlest helper.
She may be small, but she loves to help.
We practiced weighing out meat.
And Winnie found that she could open the door of the big freezer and put the meat on the lowest shelf all by herself!
I even took a little extra time to practice some fancier knife work, including boning out the strip loins and tender loins (with a narrow strip of flank attached) and rolling them up together to make a “superloin!”
Unfortunately, the day was rapidly getting warmer, and it was important to get all the meat into the freezer or refrigeration, so we had to hurry through the latter half of the process.
Last week’s leg of fenalar had to be rinsed and salted again. It was now 4 Lbs 4 oz, down 8 oz from a week ago. We will leave it in the salt dredge another week and then hang it up to cure.
Forgot to weigh leg #2 before I wrapped it, in part of what was left from last year’s recipe #2.
Finally, with the largest leg (5 Lbs 6 oz) we did a salt dredge but first…
Soaked it in red wine (I really liked the red wine and crushed mint from last year).
The salt dredge sticks well to the meat but obviously the red wine does not so…
When I wrapped it in plastic wrap, I filled that with wine. Leaving it in the wrap will cause it to form a brine, and to sit in that brine for the duration of the salt cure. Brandon Sheard’s take on this is that if it sits in the brine it will run the risk of over-salting, vs. dry curing in a tub with holes in the bottom so that the brine drains away from the meat. We are trying both approaches this year, so stay tuned.
It has taken me a week to get this posted, so I should be checking on them all today if I get time. Probably won’t because it’s a Drill weekend and the National Guard ruins everything.
Little Farm in the Big City 