Smoker

There were no seeds to plant this weekend, but the seedlings are looking great!  A few tomatoes and celery have sprouted, and pretty much all the cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts!  The cilantro has set its first true leaves, so we have transplanted it into a peat pot.  Next week we will plant cucumbers, which go directly into peat pots, and we will talk about the potting mix we use.

Our plan was to talk about composting this week, but we are going to talk about our new smoker instead. Later in April, our church will be hosting an event called "Broadway & BBQ," for which we will be smoking eight briskets!  Our original plan was to borrow smokers from friends and split up the workload (briskets take between 12 and 18 hours to smoke), but we were unable to find adequate smokers.  We decided to look on the internet and see if we could find any good deals nearby.  What we found was a great deal on a six-foot trailer mounted smoker!  The only problem was that is was located in Athens, Georgia, and they weren't going to deliver.  So, Ashley and I decided to take a road trip to the Deep South!

We left Friday morning about 6:00 am and drove straight to Georgia, arriving around 1:00 am on Saturday.  After sleeping in late on Saturday, we picked up the smoker (after donuts for b'fast) and started back to New York.  The trailer has a pretty narrow wheelbase, so we limited our speed to about 60 mph on the highway.  We made it to Roanoke, Virginia, on Saturday night, ate Mexican food for dinner, and fount a hotel.  We left Roanoke around 6:00 am Sunday morning, and arrived home in New York around 6:30 pm on Sunday.

The smoker is mounted on a trailer, about nine feet in length.  It is a traditional offset smoker, with a fire box about two feet on each side and a cooking chamber about three feet in diameter and six feet long.  We figure we can smoke up to a dozen briskets on this thing!  It has bypass smoke flow, so the meat doesn't get radiant heat from the fire, and is constructed from 1/4" plate steel.  These will allow it to keep a constant, even temperature for a long time, so I don't have to check the fire as often!  It also has a charcoal grill (2'×3') mounted on the back of the trailer, and a propane burner as well (for boiling corn or frying catfish).  We will get plenty of use out of this smoker, especially if we do this church thing every year!

Next week I will likely transplant many of the seedlings (and start a few more seeds), so I will probably talk about our potting mix and show some pictures of the seedlings (I will talk about composting the following week).  Check out the smoker pictures below!