Butchering the sausages

I am cursing. I forgot to take a photo of the carcase hanging from the ceiling on the hook in the freezer room-cum-garden shed. I have no evidence of the first stage of home butchery, so you'll just have to take my word for it that I ferried whole sides of pig, tails and trotters intact, back from the abattoir. The pork cuts and sausages were weighed, a year's supply frozen and the surplus distributed to friends who will be back in a week or so for their gammon and bacon, currently curing at the Cornish Farmhouse Bacon Company. The friends were fed and watered, indulged in blackberry fool, and sped home in the dark with cars full of porky promise.
Today is sausage making day and first task is stripping off the poorly epilated skin, discarding the line of nipples and the remaining coarse black bristles. It reminds me of scenes in Silence of the Lambs.
With the pork cut into manageable chunks it takes its first turn through the mincer with a shake of fine oatmeal, salt, pepper and small slugs of water. Each batch has its own flavourings: plain; thyme, marjoram and chives for the herby variety; apple and Calvados; sage and onion. The second run through the mincer sees 60lbs of sausages come churning out through the sausage nozzle, wrapped in natural casings in metre lengths. The dogs are remarkably well behaved considering the presence of so much meat. I squeeze and twist the lengths into links and there you are. Bagged up, labelled and stuffed in the freezer, that lot should last 'til the end of next summer. Sorted.