Christ, It was hot today! It is fair to say that not a lot was achieved in the garden as a simple wander around the vegetable garden was enough to bring on heat induced fatigue.
The day started with a trip in to Bromsgrove for a check up at the dentist and a quick wander around the aisles of Morrisons. I then headed home* and attempted, key word attempted, to smoke the slab of cured belly pork that should, more accurately, now be called streaky bacon.
I set up my tea chest smoker and packed oak sawdust in to the little tray where it smoulders and produces wafts of smoke. I lit it with a blow torch and blew on it to ensure that it was smouldering nicely, before placing it in the base of the smoking cabinet and closing the door.
After twenty or thirty minutes I checked and the ember had died and no smoke was being produced. I tried other batches of sawdust and even hickory pellets but nothing would take. I must have attempted half a dozen time, but I couldn't get the damned thing to smoke.
It has worked perfectly on previous occasions, but not today. I gave up in the late afternoon, wondering whether the sawdust was damp and, like a drowning man clutching at straws, put a batch in a low oven to dry.
At this rate I'll be slicing green bacon rather than smoked.
It is fair to say that I was quite frustrated by the inability to get the smoker going and felt that I needed some sort of win. I therefore made preparations for Autumn by lining a couple of large wooden crates with chicken wire. These will be used to produce leaf mould later in the year. I transferred the crates up to the orchard and concealed them behind Rose Cottage.
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* The large pallet in the car port did not escape my attention ... I guess the new poultry ark has arrived then.
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