Ady killed a pig this morning, I fed the others while he did the deed and then I went off down the hill to do post office. Except I had totally forgotten it was Bank Holiday and post office was supposed to be closed. Ross and Neil came in and I had already sold myself a stamp and banked the shop takings when Ross said ‘I didn’t think you’d be open’ and I realised I was not actually supposed to be! I decided that rather than either expect Jinty to pay me when I wasn’t supposed to be there, or work for free I would close back up again and go home. I cut a load of basket materials along the way home so not an entirely wasted hour!
Ady had already skinned the pig so I helped with some cutting, weighing and bagging and then brought the bacon in to get it in a dry cure mix. Not enough salt at home to make a brine for the wet cure ham but it is in the container waiting and I will bring some salt home tomorrow, it’s so cold it will be fine for another 24 hours. All very efficiently done. We have it down to a fine art now. It was very, very cold though and by the end I couldn’t feel my fingers which is not a good thing when brandishing a sharp knife.
Back in for a speedy lunch before heading back to the village. Davies and Scarlett cycled down – a good fresh air and exercise idea but they were both freezing cold afterwards and we even tried to fit the bikes in the car at the pier so we could give them a lift back but it would not all fit so they rode home again. We went via the freezer to drop off the pork. We were there to see Sean the Rat off who was leaving Rum today. Lots of hugs and goodbyes and waving 🙁
We planned to wait for the post back in the village but it seemed to be taking forever so despite hanging around getting some fence posts from the ‘we need to get rid of it so help yourselves’ pile of SNHs and me cutting some more basket materials and collecting some hay from the shed for pig bedding it was still not done – maybe because of the bank holiday?!? So we gave up and came home. We fed the pigs and then came in for cups of tea and coffee, getting warm infront of the fire and watching a wildlife documentary with Scarlett.
Dinner tonight was pork stir fry and sticky ribs, clean plates all round. Tomorrow is definitely a post office day…