I have lived in North Texas for forty one years and I can now say I have seen two White Christmases. We had some really bad storms come through followed by a bunch of snow that has completely shut down this part of the country.
I finally get to go back to work tomorrow, but sitting around these last few days has been, well, boring. I have done what I could, but other than that my main job has been to keep wood in the house and the fire going.
With deep freezes on a homestead, problems can occur even with the best plan laid out. You still have to go out twice to three times a day to break ice so the animals can get water. The sewer sprinklers still freezes and you have to conserve water use. You still have to drip water in the sinks so your pipes won't freeze and break and the list goes on and on. Add in Christmas and the kids down the road get a new 4-wheeler and want to run through your yard and now you have many more problems.
The pork belly has been curing in the icebox for the past seven days and I had perfect weather to get it smoked.
I used Hickory to flavor the meat for four hours at a low temp then took the smoked pork in the house to slice up as bacon. When it was all done, the summer pig made twelve pounds of the best tasting bacon you ever had.
I can tell you this, if you haven't had home made bacon before you need too. It is so much better than that store bought crap.
Next is the hams but that takes a little longer to do.
While the bacon was on the cold smoker I went ahead and set up the Bio Sand Filter. I know I said I would not do this until the spring, but I do not have any patience and needed to get it out of my shop anyway.
I won't be able to start using it until the spring, but at least it is out of the shop.
Other than that it has been just fixing one thing after another. The solar heater in the shop had it up in the sixties while the sun was out yesterday, but today the sun has been overcast and it stayed cold in there so not much work has been done in the shop.
One a good note, the kids got me a really nice framing nail gun for Christmas that I really did need so I am excited about that. I am getting ready to get started on the little condos for them, but first I need to find the money to buy a generator so I can go down to our old house on the farm and start disassembling it so I can use that lumber to build the condos. I just can't afford one right now.
That's all I got for now. I wish you all a great new years. It looks like new years dinner is on me this time so I am sure we will have a house full.
