Up far too early (while it was still properly dark!) for venison processing this morning. We left Davies and Scarlett still in bed having whispered goodbyes in their ears and left their breakfast set out. Even the pigs were still in bed so we didn’t feed the animals on our way down to the village. We collected Neil and various equipment from his house and then to the larder.
After some initial confusion when Ady and Neil misread CIC as UHU (it *could* have said that I suppose written sideways….) we identified the two beasts for us from the 13 hanging in the larder and selected the first to work on. We all worked together to skin it and then Ady and Neil butchered it and I minced it, made up two sets of burger mix, bagged up some mince and then double minced the burger mix before making the burgers. Nearly 100 of them! Neil vacuum packed while Ady cleaned down and we were all done well within four hours. One dead animal into four steaks, 100 burgers and 7 bags of mince all packed up and into the freezer. We all took a sample of each burger home to try as we are still not in a position to be paid for the work (another sigh-worthy story for another time) so all feel there must be some perks to getting up in the dark!
Neil went off home, we went along to the pier to put the meat in our new venison processing company freezer before coming home for lunch. The kids had watched a film, played some minecraft and DS. We had lunch, Ady did some outside stuff, I made some cookies and bread dough for garlic bread to go with dinner then caught up on emails. I’d had a reply from the letting agents to say they have made contact with our tenants and will get in touch with the sales team to get the house valued and let us know their terms for selling, one from Gav and Laura looking forward to getting here in 5 weeks time and various emails from various people on Rum about the newsletter – I am now editing and creating a monthly Rum newsletter which I am looking forward to and think will be good fun. I’m planning on getting the kids to help me too. Also about the Visitor Management Group and the Bunkhouse Steering Group – meetings a-go-go again soon. One from Fliss about the school job saying they are waiting for a reference and can I send it – I replied to say that usually the employer takes up references and erm, where is the paperwork even offering me the job actually! I feel sorry for Fliss on this one really, she is still there despite having officially left in December while the council faff about not sorting out my starting.
The kids did some room tidying, some playmobil and geomag playing and more minecraft. I made dinner and we started watching Mary Poppins which I had not realised was quite such a long film. Ferry was cancelled again today and the next available date to get diesel cans sent off and back is over a week and petrol a fortnight so we will need to conserve petrol and diesel which means sensible car and generator use
Tomorrow is another venison morning so another early start but that is the deer cull done til July so all our attention then can go to marketing, planning and stuff which does not involve blood under your fingernails!