Hello garden gals and guys! It’s week 5a of No More Grocery Store! We processed a leg quarter that a friend of the family gave to us. Processing meat is actually a pretty cool process. I’ll tell you a little about it and I’ve also got a neat 3-minute video to show us in action.

We started with a rear leg quarter of a deer.

We cut along the center of the quarter along the bone and then open the meat and take it off. The quarter looks like this after the meat has been removed:
You then take that meat, fold it back upon itself and cut it into steaks. It looks like this:
The rest of the meat that was left on the bone is cut from the bone and deer fat removed (it’s doesn’t taste good at all).  
The meat is put through a meat grinder (I use the fine grinding plate) Then I add pork fat to the ground meat and put it back through the meat grinder again to thoroughly incorporate the fat into the meat. I make a 75/25 mixture of meat to fat which is good for burgers and meatloaf. 
After it’s all done, I put it in bags to store it. I usually foodsaver my meat, but because we are going to be eating it through the week this week, I just put it into ziploc bags and put it in the refrigerator.  The meat looks like this when done (the two bags on the left are the steaks…the two bags on the right are the ground):
Now here’s a neat little video showing us in action processing the meat:

So that’s it! Pretty neat, huh? I have to say…it takes a lot of work to feed the family without using the grocery store…but it sure is worth it!  
Now for some garden talk. I’ve got a neat project I’ve been working on for the garden and it’s almost finished. Keep your eyes peeled for my next blog post! You’re gonna love it…I promise!
Until next time garden gals and guys….
Happy gardening!