Freezer FINALLY Full...in February!!!

...well, here it is mid-February (what!?! Where has the time gone???) and we FINALLY got Matt's deer (from November) all butchered and the freezer filled. I kept complaining long enough that he finally just did it! I hadn't bought meat at the store in forever and spending $10/week on ground beef was really screwing up my budget!

Normally, this process takes about 4-5 hours out at the farm but we also normally have 5 people working and are butchering two deer. This time around, it still probably took us 4-5 hours but it was only 3 people and one deer. Back in December, SIL came over one night to help. Her and DH cut everything off the bone. Then a couple Saturdays ago, she came over and helped us grind the meat into what I like to call "burger" AKA ground venison. Here is the start of the process, luckily, being pregnant, I didn't have to actually touch any raw meat, I was the wrapper:

This year, we tried something new since we were around civilization and better able to prepare. I bought a pork butt and we mixed it with some of the deer. Then we added some salt, pepper, rosemary and, umm....some other seasoning I can't remember. We mixed it all together in an effort to make breakfast sausage. I was very pleased with the end result of the whole process:

On the left is all the "burger" and on the right is all the steaks we cut out and the sausage that we made. This will definitely keep our tummies full until next November when deer season rolls around again. Thank you Mattie for getting us a deer and thanks SIL for helping us with this whole process!