Competition BBQ is a lot of work...

It's Labor day, so of course I labored.

I spent Saturday getting 80 lbs of pork prepared and on the smokers for next weekends hometown festival. I was able to get all of the pork on two of my WSMs so I had less cookers to tend. After getting that going, I mowed the lawn.

I keep two of my WSMs outside for everyday cooking, and two are stored in the garage and only get used when I need more than two cookers, which is rare. The two that get stored inside I like to make sure are really clean when put away, especially since they were used at last weekends comp.

It's surprising how much work it takes to get them all cleaned up. We got the last one done today and once it's dry it'll get stored.

My dad came over after worship yesterday and we pulled the butts for next week. The butts had been in a cooler for 8 hours or so, and were still almost too hot to pull. Some heavy rubber gloves made that task easier. It sure went fast with two sets of hands pulling. We packaged all of the pulled pork into 4 lb bags and vacu-sucked it. Yield on 80+ lbs of raw butts was 43 lbs, so just over 50%. It was gooood pork, too!

Then of course there was more clean-up. Wash the tables. Wash the bus tubs. Wash the gloves. Wash the vacu-seal. Wash the scale. Wash wash wash.

I'm glad it's finally done, and I can relax tonight.