Grinding Meat

We raised two hogs and two steers over the winter.  Then we butchered them about a month ago.  We had the butcher do a kill and chill on one of each, so that we could do the cutting up and processing ourselves.  (We sold the other two animals and let the butcher take care of all that.)  Anyway, we finished up grinding the last of the hamburger tonight!  Yay!  This is cause for celebration, for sure!  We didn't have a meat grinder when we processed the steer, so we froze all the trimmings and such that we wanted to put into grind me.  When we did the hog, we splurged on a meat grinder, and I'm really glad that we did.  It's made pretty easy work of grinding the meat.  We did at least 120 lbs of ground beef the day after we processed the hog, which included about 25 lbs of ground pork.  We've been putting off finishing up the rest--probably about 40 lbs or so.  But, my husband, the motivator and instigator, set out the meat last night, and then proceeded to grind all of it tonight.  What a guy!  The plan was to work on it together, but the baby needed to be nursed and then the toddler needed cleaning up after playing in the sandbox.  So, by the time I took care of all that, he was finished grinding and had even wrapped about half of it.  I finished up the wrapping and now it's in the freezer!  It feels so good to know that we have a giant freezer full of meat; meat that we raised and cut up and wrapped!  It's quite an accomplishment, if I may say so. :)

I will upload pictures later...internet is not cooperating now.  Grrrr...