From Farmyard to Freezer

Last week, a friend gave us a Buff Orpington Bantam rooster to put with our bantam flock (we also have an egg laying flock - Black Sussex crosses,& a meat bird flock - Buff Orpingtons & crosses). This also meant that after weeks of procrastination, I really did have to catch all 5 of the roosters in the bantam pen. So, after some discomfort & with some help, all 5 were caught & put in the small mobile pen until we had time to dispatch them. Well, yesterday was the dispatch day, & we are getting better & faster at the whole process, but whilst we had 4 cleaned whole chickens in the fridge in not much more than an hour, we also had 1 escapee rooster on the run. After a few unsuccessful attempts to either net him or return him to the bantam pen, it got too dark to see, so we eventually closed up the bantam pen & hoped he would not be fox food. But, a miracle of nature, this morning he is back in the bantam pen, being soundly chased by BOB (the Buff Orpingtan Bantam), so my fears of fighting roosters have been proven totally unfounded.

These roosters were 6 months - 4 years old, so in addition to being very small, will also need lots of slow cooking. But we have found that they make really delicious casseroles & curries, with a very intense flavour, & a good texture (not the pap from industrially farmed chickens). Last night, we had a very tasty Butter Chicken curry with one of our previous batch of frozen roosters which had been slow cooked first, the cooked breast meat had gone into a very nice Vietnamese Chicken Salad, & the rest into the curry. Even though there is as much work in killing & cleaning a large rooster as there is in a small rooster, I don't believe in wasting them, even to the compost heap, as to me, it seems disrespectful of the value of their lives. It is not easy knowing and being eye to eye with your dinner, but it seems to me to be an ethical omnivorous solution.

The horrible hot winds of the last week have eased overnight, & we have had 1mm of very welcome rain early this morning. I managed to mulch about one third of the vege garden last week, but only watered it twice, and even so, my zucchini seeds have germinated. We have been eating the last of the carrots & parsnips from last year, as well as greens & herbs, & I have been pulling out all of the rocket & various cabbage varieties that have gone to seed, & feeding them to the piglets & chickens. I did the same last year, & now have self sown rocket, mustard, dill, cabbage & carrots in the place where the mobile chicken pens were last summer, which is a great bonus, so I hope the same thing happens in the Piggy Stalag & Chookingham Palace. It is still overcast, misty & cool, & when I went to let the geese out, found that the piglets (Rebus & Roux) were still in bed in their comfy well mulched pen. The animals do know how to adapt their behaviour to the weather - how sensible it would be to follow their example, instead of our usual daily routines which totally ignore the weather & do not acknowledge in any way that it impacts on human beings at all.

The last very pregnant cow had her Dexter cross calf on Saturday, so I'll have to go down to the end paddock to check it out later today. The cow's udder was so huge, she could have been mistaken for a dairy cow, but hopefully, the calf will be very well fed. The alpacas are looking well, & in good condition, & I am so glad they were shorn before all of the hot windy weather, although that is always just good luck. I've started working on the fleeces, & sent away all of the black ones last week for spinning. My next lot of eggs in the incubator started hatching last night, & there are quite a few eggs rocking away, & 1 damp newly hatched chick there this morning, so I'll be making lots of trips to the garden shed to check them today.