Fitting It All In

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I’m on “baby watch” waiting on the birth of our granddaughter, Harper Rae, while Philip is away hunting. He has several hunting trips over the next few weeks. I’m working to finish the meat processing before he comes in with more meat. I’m fitting it all in to my schedule, between work and the regular farm chores. No worries, Philip left Roxie, the supervisor, to watch over my work.

Grinding Venison

Using an electric meat grinder, I ground the last 14 pounds of venison. Any usable cuts are put into the ground and is mixed with a 20% mixture of pork fat. It takes a strong shoulder to keep pushing the meat through the machine. Thankfully I have a small batch to process on my own.

We have a variety of tools that make packaging and preserving our bounty easier. The meat package sealer is one of those tools. While it takes a little practice but really makes the process of meat packaging go smoothly. It’s one of those tools that each time I pick it up, I have to figure out how to use it all over again.

Packaging the Harvest

Once the meat is ground. We pack it into 1 or 1 1/2 pound bags. Depending on what we have for bags and meat. Each bag is labeled with the date, amount of meat, and contents. Once complete the ground meat packages are added to the freezer. We’ve been processing so much meat as of late, fitting it all in is a challenge of it’s own.

Tools for the Trade

For today’s processing task I used a quality meat grinder, food trays, food grade tub with lid, meat package sealer, Meat storage bags

We process all of our own meats, check out our process here.