Sausages and Syrup

DH and I returned from our mini-vacation on Thursday evening last week.  On Friday (he had also taken as a vacation day), DH purchased 60 pounds of boneless pork butt, and that evening both of our sons came over to make sausage.  K3 and Toad came along too, and spent the night (DS1 went home and came back the next morning to finish the sausage project.)  DD1 and Honorary Son also came over on Saturday to assist with the sausage.  That's been our rule since we started making sausage in 2016:  if you want homemade sausage, you  must come help create it.

I typically don't assist in the sausage making endeavors, mainly because I eat very little sausage (for some reason my digestive system is not fond of pork sausage) and also because there are always many other tasks on my to-do list.  That weekend, my main task--other than catching up on laundry after being away from home--was to boil down the 15 gallons of sap that flowed that week.  I had set taps the prior weekend, in anticipation of the warm up that was forecasted to occur while I was out of town.

After breakfast on Saturday, the guys ground the 60 pounds of meat they had diced and seasoned the night before, and the grandkids and I checked sap buckets out in the woods to see if any more had run overnight. It hadn't, but the grandkids wanted to go look, so we did.  Any excuse to go for a tractor ride or to the woods will do.

It was rather muddy in the woods, and K3 mostly wanted to just walk/balance on every fallen tree she could find.

Toad, on the other hand, is drawn to puddles and mud like a magnet.  As a bonus, it had been cold enough overnight to form a thin layer of ice on most of the wet spots in the woods.  He of course had to walk on them to see if the ice was thick enough to hold him.

It wasn't.  But that was okay, because both kids were wearing boots.  We always request that they bring boots when they are coming over to stay with us.  Because kids need to explore outside no matter what the weather or ground conditions.

Back in the house, they washed up and then helped with stuffing Italian sausage into casings, as well as packaging all three kinds of sausage: Italian, chorizo, and breakfast.  They also helped me keep an eye on the sap as it boiled down.  

Unfortunately, they had to go home before it was finished syrup, but I did dip a little out shortly before they left and let it cool so that they could taste the progress from slightly sweet water (the beginning sap) to light golden brown almost-syrup that was kind of like an uncarbonated maple flavored soft drink.

A few hours later, the syrup was completed, a lovely amber color with a delicious flavor.  That fifteen gallons of sap yielded 2 pints, 6 ounces.  The pints are sealed and in storage until needed.  The 6 ounces, being not enough to fill even a half-pint container, went into the fridge for use first.  A couple spoonfuls went on top of vanilla ice cream for DH and my dessert that night.

This post tells in more detail about how we make sausage.