Yesterday evening late we loaded up 4 Kune Kune Pigs to take to be processed today. We left this morning at 6:15 and made the hour long trek to the plant. These pigs will be made into sweet Italian sausage, bratwurst, and breakfast sausage both mild and hot.
Once home I plundered through the freezers and confirmed that other than breakfast sausage we are good on pork and don't really need anything until the next go round which will be in about 4 months. My freezers are overflowing and thankfully we have people wanting to purchase most of this pork. However, I still needed to make room for the breakfast sausage. I pulled out several packs of deer for stew and some hot Italian sausage for more Zuppa Toscana soup to can and shaped the sourdough bread that had been rising all night.
Unfortunately, I realized I needed carrots for the stew so I tossed the meats in cold water and made a grocery store run. I had only planned to get carrots but then I discovered lots of mushrooms marked down. I seriously had a long conversation in my head debating whether I had time to do the stew, soup and mushrooms. Canning the mushrooms make them about 60 cents a jar making them less than half the price of what store bough cost plus the taste is so much better. Frugality won out and mushrooms were tossed in my cart. Sigh.

Once back home I started the soup. I used our sausage and some beautiful fresh kale from the garden. This is one of my favorites as I've mentioned before, I make it and once I open the jars I heat with a dollop of heavy cream. Oh my! Now I can use the heavy cream from Miss Violet making it even more delish.

Next I raw packed the deer stew with carrots, potatoes and onions. Once they were processing I started on the mushrooms and popped the bread in the oven.

Soon enough I had 4 quarts of stew and 7 more jars of mushrooms ready to put on the pantry shelves.Since it was past time for barn chores and milking The Zuppa and sourdough will be tonight's homestead supper and the rest will be canned tomorrow!