Homemade Sausage Making

last month I cut a Mimosa tree away from the foundation of a house where I am working. It was a nice size about 2 1/2 inches thick so today i decided to find out what the smoke smelled like.
I would classify it as a cross between cigar smoke and burnt chicken feathers. So if that is the aroma you are looking for you know where to find it but I will pass on this and consign it to the brush pile where it can become humus.

If you use birch, make sure that you peel the bark!!! The bark, when burning, emits a nasty black sooty smoke that attaches to the sausage like $h!t to a Hudson Bay blanket!! Peeled birch makes a good smoke.

I have several 30 year old chunks of birch fire wood that I can peel also some old norway maple. When I get my cold smoker set up for this fall I can start one of those chunks and let it smolder for a week.

Mama Smoked Birch... Daddy Sang Tenor,
And Little Ross Hill Just Joined Right In There!

My mother smoked my chicken,
It always made me cough!
I wish that when she smoked it,
She'd take the birch bark off!

Yup, her chicken was atrocious,
It always made me gasp!
I swallered' hard to choke it down,
It felt like Ross Hill's rasp!

I`ll try once more to eat the bird,
Tho` burnt birch is quite enough;
I'll force it down my gullet,
With "other" nasty stuff!

I figure I must have a swig,
Of Buck`s "nectar in a jug";
Unclebuck`s "oil" will make it slide,
I`ll just drink it by the MUG!

Now, it won`t be said that we can`t take,
Lil` problems right to task;
Just smoke the things that bother us,
And put `em in the past!

So, if your smoked chicken just makes you cough,
And hack, and gasp, and choke;
Then toss that birch bark in the trash,
And use some good white oak!

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

Now you listen here chuckwagon You callin' me little has got my dander up. I am gonna draw myself up to my full height and look you right in the belt buckle and ask where you get good white oak in that god forsaken desert they call Utah. Have to haul it out of the canyons on the backs of mules I bet. Does sage brush make good smoke? I know there is lots of it out there. I will Just have a religious ceremony and release the spirit of the birch tree back into the sky and not ask him to flavor my food, warming my house will be plenty.
Clever parody .

Dander up? Ross, don`t you have to have "hair" to get your dander up? Har har...
Out here, we have to mine our white oak. Yes, yes... all short folks, under 6` 4" are put to work beneath the scorching desert`s surface, to mine the white oak chunks deposited centuries ago by the hatu (that`s Utah spelled backwards) winds. You see, the hatu blew so hard at one time, that whole forests of white oak trees were uprooted, becoming airborne. Following the path of "hot air" (hatu) they eventually drifted into the west from many of the eastern states. That`s actually where the term "driftwood" originated. And that`s not all. All that hovering white oak driftwood presented such peril to the fowls of Utah`s skies, that most birds became aqua fons inhibeo or sub-mariners by choice, ultimately developing gills and finally relinquishing their wings for fins, as they dove into the Great Salt Lake in herds, rather than flocks! Thus today, we have the Great Salt Lake "white oakius bigfibbius horsecrapius". Of course, over time, the hatu - blowing more hot air across the desert- covered the white oak with red sandstone dust, miles deep! In fact, the short, white oak miners have to travel into the bowels of the earth by rail. Thus, years ago we coined the term, "rode out of town on a rail". Ya know Ross, it`s really strange that there is so much of that hot air still around this place! We still use it to fan a desert fire of another kind of hardwood we never, ever, use for smokin` food. Huge chips of this special hardwood are called "buffalomuffins". And, oh yes, we trade another hardwood to you folks in the east in order to obtain hickory, oak, and alder. It`s called mesquite!

Best Wishes,
Chuckwaggintongue

ROTFLMAO

We have an Angus grower here and when he grills burgers for the folk at church he insists that they be called beefburgers. So I ask him one day why it was that we can get lamb patties, sausage patties but when it comes to the cows it is beef burgers. He said that he could supply cow patties if anyone asked.

buffalomuffins

Where do you guys come up with this stuff.

Speaking of muffins!
Here in the Green mountains, at a local festival, they play cow bingo. Yup, they will block off the whole street and paint hundred of squares in the road, then paint a number in each square. When they release the cow it wonders around the street, until natures calls, and that square wins the whole jackpot! It`s quite a site to watch, some lucky on looker wins a boat load of cash.