Stuff

Rain rain rain rain rain.....

Tis raining here. Tis a good thing I have wellies to walk outback or I'd get lost in the mud.  The dogs are quite a sight when they come bounding in from out there. We holler for towels before we let them in ...
              Punkers gets cold at night since he doesn't sleep in his kennel anymore  (he seems to be claustrophobic and he has some strange sleep habits that don't work well in the confines of a kennel...) and we find him shivering some mornings. So Violet (my older sister) decided it was time to make a sort of bed jacket/cape type thing for him out of fleece. It was not thrilled during the various fittings and he was even more not thrilled when it was finished and she suited him up in it. But hey, he'd be warm right? Well, it took him less than an hour to have the thing off last night , thankfully he didn't eat it. The first thing his brother did when he saw it was to take a nice big mouthful and try to yank it off for him. Alas... the Velcro held it fast...
I would give a picture here but it isn't working today for some reason . Stinkin blogger.....
               
            In other news, the whole yard and garden is now re piped ... we shall see if all these rains and the new water have any effect on the arsenic levels in the soil. I'm being overly optimistic and went ahead and ordered some seeds for next years garden in wild hopes of being able to actually , you know , stick them in the ground and be able to eat what grows ... instead of having to feed it to the ducks. Who , according to my doctor , have no problem with heavy metals and other toxins that would affect all of us... Anyway, at least the lettuce gets to go to SOMEone..... 

What have we been up to?

Well..... long time no post eh? We can all agree that I am a very lousy blogger. Thanksgiving has come and gone. With it the pies and delectable leftovers... including two turkeys. One was a regular , cheap , store turkey for the people who didn't care and the other was smaller but pasture raised from a local farm for the people that DID care. Originally we wanted to see if we could get the thing live and do our own turkey butchering but that didn't work out. Someone else got that fun. It would have  been a neat new tradition though... and we could have taken pictures of the whole thing and then displayed them for the guests at the feast. Now wouldn't that give them an appetite? "Tonight you will be consuming Henry... here are pictures of him when he had feathers.... notice how bright his combs were? How plump he looks. Now he is being bled out... now plucked .... Elly May is gutting here.... Who wants turkey? " 
                           We had squash pie made by yours truly made from a Galeux D' Eysines squash grown by yours truly. I was so proud. We made pumpkin ice cream with it too and boy was that a treat.  I was good and I had a total of two bites of pie and maybe a spoonful of ice cream.... it was enough to have a decent taste without making me sick from the sugar.
            Now all the leftovers are gone , the kitchen is back to the normal routine.  Except today we had all the hot water shut off because we are getting new copper pipes. Apparently our old galvanized were over 100 years old and so full of crud it was amazing we got any water out of them at all. We think that is where the heavy metals and arsenic are coming from that have made the garden a toxic waste dump. At least we hope that is where it is coming from because otherwise that was a lot of trouble re piping for nothing. I hope it makes a difference as I'd love to get back to gardening by next spring or summer at least . The backyard looks like WW1 with trenches everywhere . I was so thrilled today when I turned on the faucet in the duck pen and actually got water . It has been off for a few days and having to use an alternate hose from farther away was getting to be quite the chore.

                    Last week we took a field trip south of here to go to a candy store .... well for me anyway . It was a guitar shop (and other instruments.. but mostly guitar) . I'd actually  bought my first banjo from them about 5 years ago. But I didn't have to go down there to buy it as they were up our way at a bluegrass festival. ANYway... I'd been in the market for a new guitar for awhile and had been doing recon trips to several shops around here and was only successful in finding things I didn't like or were really nice but way out of my spending range. I also got into trouble when I fell in love with another banjo. I've had a Deering Golden Era for a long time which is fantastic for the bluegrass stuff and I use it for teaching, but I also love the clawhammer style and that kind of calls for a different style banjo. I'd had a Vega Old Tyme Wonder for years that I'd snagged off ebay a few years ago but it never had that old, plunky sound I was looking for . We'd tried changing the action, the head.. the strings, the bridge... still not plunky. Very echo-ey... but not plunky. I'd toyed with selling it for a long time but I needed to find one I liked to replace it first.  Soooo.. on a guitar research trip, I pick one of the banjos of the wall..... and I play it... and I want to cry. It is that wonderful plunky , old timey sound... It called to me... it moved me in a way I can't put into words other than I fell completely in love with it on the spot and knew that was it. But I wasn't going to pay what they were asking for it. So I walked away .
                I looked online though and found this other store had one for less.... and they take trade ins..... And they have guitars.... lots and lots of them. So down we went. I found my banjo (a Wildwood )  , compared it to the Omes .. the Bart Reiders... even a VERY plunky fretless model ... and I still loved it the best. So with that out of the way I moved on to the guitars and found that $5000 + guitars sound VERY nice..... But I do not have a sugar daddy nor am I independently wealthy so that was a no go... I eventually found a used Taylor in mint condition that played like butter that I could actually buy without going into debt... which I refused to do. I blew all may savings that day and I'm broke but very very happy. The Taylor is big and boomy and vibrates my ribs . And it is loud enough to not be drowned out by a banjo. And since it is so very loud it makes me sing louder so I can hear myself over the guitar.
                      Coming home with them both on the same day made me feel like I'd won the lottery. And I was so happy for the looking to be over. That was getting quite tiring. Now my fingers are shredded with peeling callouses from playing so much but that is just fine with me. I feel very blessed. I prayed so hard beforehand that I'd get the right instruments... the ones that were meant to be mine. And it sure feels like He answered that one.

100 and counting

This marks the 100th post on this blog. And sadly , it is going to be pretty boring. I know it has been quiet around here for  a long time . That should come as no surprise now to my loyal reader(s) (haha... yeah.. you know who you are...) . I (Annabelle) have been sick for the past two weeks and I'm on strict orders from my doctor to "rest" ... which I feel like I've been doing for an eternity already. I don't like being run off my feet to the point of exhaustion anymore than the next person but also I don't like enforced resting for what seems to be eternal periods of time. To get the most enjoyment out of rest .... you have to have done something first. Hopefully something meaningful and productive. Anyway.... life doesn't happen the way you hope or plan ... not in the "real quotidian world " anyway.
                  Elly May has been kind enough to  take care of the ducks for me when I couldn't drag myself out of bed in a timely fashion. They didn't take to a stranger coming in at first. They are big on routine.... I understand that. I like my routines too and to have them majorly disrupted is always rather unsettling.... but they did enjoy eating whether I was there or not.
                          In garden news, cover crop is up and growing in the top bed .. as well as various salad greens. Only .. those aren't up yet, they were just planted.  We had soil testing done and the results were rather discouraging. We have high levels of arsenic of all things and we are now unable to grow root crops as they pick up too much of the toxic metal.....You try to do something good and healthy in the city and yet you are living in a toxic soup.... I'm assuming it comes from the power poles right behind our house that are treated heavily with arsenic and they come and spray them off each year to clean the transformers and the spray falls all over the garden. Nice huh?   The toxins were even showing up in the onions and squash that grew back there. Humph.
                
                    I was going through my picture stash and realized I didn't post any pictures from the photo spree I had last year with my cousin's camera. So here are a few shots ...

Happy Fall everyone!!

Heat Stroke..

It is HOT here today.... In fact, it broke the record . It was 113 F  (45 C for those of you outside the US) . That is pretty darn warm.  And Elly May made leek and onion soup. Go figure. We ate it cold.  The ducks did fine with frequent water changes but I went up to check on the chickens , who don't seem to handle the heat as well .... and noticed our White Rock laying limp under the feeder (it hangs) . I ran over and scooped her up . She was still alive and I cradled her in my arms and rushed up to the house... I was thinking of trying to cool her off in some way... she was sooo warm.... but she died in my arms on the way to the house. I wasn't completely sure at the time so I still put her in the sink and ran water over her neck but then I realized it was all too late and she was gone . ..... I felt sorry for her. She was one of the ones on the very bottom of the pecking order and she got picked on a lot. I'd actually thought of culling her earlier as she didn't look the greatest (all the stress of being the lowest of the low can get to one..) but she was still laying and seemed okay despite having feathers pulled out. Well, now I don't have to do that.... Poor girl. 
                The ducks are 5 weeks old today.... Where did the time go? They shall be completely feathered out soon. And they shall be gorgeous.
                  The winter greens I started a couple weeks ago when it was cool are getting fried in this heat... We shall see if they survive. I hope so. The top bed is completely empty (except for a squash plant) and ready for planting. I had a soil test done and found I needed to add gypsum so that has been done. We'll see if that changes anything in the coming growing season. Or it may do nothing and those darn bagrada bugs (imported somehow from Africa two years ago.. they look like small harlequin bugs) will eat everything as they seem to be trying to do already. I wonder if cool weather affects them at all?? I guess we'll find that out too.

The Post You've All Been Waing For !!! Chicken Butchering 101

Since you've had so many cute posts in a row with nothing to turn your stomach... I decided it was time for a change. These pics have been in my file for awhile.... long before ducks came along. In fact.. these guys had to go because the ducks were coming along. Anyway... if you are squeamish.. and don't want to see how to kill and gut chickens... skip this post. But if you want to see how we do it... by all means continue. I am not posting this to be graphic. We respect our animals in life and hope to do so in death as well. This is more for people who have asked "just how do I go about doing this" . This is how we do it. When I was learning, and before I did my first one (years ago) , I had nowhere to turn but books. Those were hopelessly inadequate and confusing. They all recommend finding someone to show you. But in case you haven't noticed, there isn't a heck of a lot of chicken processing going on in the city ... not this one anyway, and finding someone to show you is near impossible. So, with book in hand and chicken in the other.... I did my first one... it took me about 1/2 an hour because I had no idea what I was doing (where is the jugular??? where does the knife go exactly? why can't they show the arteries in the pictures???!! what do you mean "remove the entrails with your hand "? how? what am I grabbing? what am I looking for?? I just reach in?? yup ) . But I did it! And I felt so accomplished. It is a dying art.... Being able to make chicken soup from scratch... Really from scratch. Now, over a hundred birds later, I feel quite confident and even have a nice system going where we can do things a lot more efficiently. I am the throat slicer, be header, scalder and plucker . Then I pass them off to Mom and Elly May who are expert gutters. I have a knack for tearing livers and they don't.

How poetic... j/k .. This isn't really in sequence and I don't kill them with a hatchet.. It sends the birds into shock and they don't bleed out as well and they also end up much tougher with all the adrenaline pumping through them.

This is how we do ours. They are upended in a killing cone, you could use an old traffic cone with some minor adjustments (cutting the hole bigger perhaps ). I only have two so I do two at a time. At Polyface they do like... 10 or more at one time. They have an awesome set up . I've been there. Wow.. it was nice. But I'm not doing thousands of birds .. just 10 today.

I use a double bladed narrow knife.. I think I got this one from Murray McMurray Hatcheries... . Unlike the books I've seen, I don't go along side the artery and then out.. I met a wonderful old man at our church (one of our pastors actually) who used to work in chicken processing and he told me they used to just stick the knife clean through to the other side hitting both arteries. You have to go behind the windpipe and esophagus . This lets them still breath and their heart pumps the blood out for a clean bleed. Some may say this sounds terrible... keeping them alive while they bleed to death but it is actually less traumatic than just whacking the head off. I've heard Susan Weed say (she is an herbalist and midwife) that she has spoken to women who nearly bled to death during childbirth and it actually feels euphoric and pleasant. You slowly slip away and feel light headed. Now, I've never asked a chicken... but I'm assuming it is similar. Anyway, I don't know if you can see my knife coming through there but that is about where you want it. It does take practice and if you don't get blood coming out at a good flow , you must go back and hit the artery or else they will not bleed out properly and they will take much longer to die. Blood should be coming out both sides if done properly .

We stick buckets with mulch or shavings underneath to catch the blood, them compost it. The blood should be bright red... not dark .. If it is dark it is from a vein . Bright red is from and artery. At this point, after they are bled out and dead . I like to remove the head . That is where the hatchet comes in. It seems less bird like and more dinner like at that point. This is just a personal preference .. you certainly don't have to take the head off at this point.. But I don't want to see a featherless chicken with a head.. but again, that is just me.

Then we scald. We use a turkey fryer. It works great. The water is about 145 F . That has seemed to work best for us. Too hot and you cook the skin, to cool and the feathers won't come out. Put a little dish soap in the water and it helps get the water down to the skin and they come out cleaner. ;-) Slosh the birds up and down holding on to the feet for about a minute. Keep checking the feathers. Pull on some wing feathers or tail feathers and stop scalding when they come out easily.

Slosh . Slosh slosh..

Then... you pluck.Take them out of the water, set them on a work surface and just grab handfuls of feathers and pull. Tail feathers are the toughest. Work over the carcass 'til you have it clean. You can singe off little hairs later with some flames. Either a lighter or a blow torch..

I have a plucker.. A Featherman Plucker . You could also build yourself a Whizbang . This is one of the greatest inventions of all time. Right up there with A/C in cars... It is awesome . You throw in a scalded bird and flip the switch... in 30 seconds you have a naked chicken.

Is that cool or what??

Then I pass off the birds to the gutters. The zip ties you see there I use to tie their feet together and then I put a bungee cord on that and hook that to the tree above where I'm bleeding them. This keeps them from flipping themselves out of the cones.... a rather unnerving experience. ... Anyway, the feet go.. They get cut off at the first joint there.

I don't have any pictures of slitting the neck skin to loosen the craw and windpipe.. but you do that. Then you make a small , shallow slice above the vent opening (if the bird is on it's back) through the skin and a layer of fat until you see an opening into the cavity , then you stick your hand in and make the hole bigger. The whole point of this is to NOT cut into the intestines. Then you work your hand around that mass of entrails and start working it loose. You want to go up by the neck and pull the stomach/craw all the way through. This is why you loosened it before when you cut into the neck skin. Ideally, you'll pull all this out in one big mass...

Like so. The intestines are still attached to the vent and you want to now take your knife and cut careful around the vent until you've freed the intestines and you can just pull everything out now. DON'T cut into the intestines. I should also mention here that it is a really good idea to fast your birds for at least 12 hours with just water . Then their craws won't be full of food and their intestines won't be so full. That makes everything a lot more pleasant for all involved.

Going backwards.... here is removing the feet.. After all this, rinse, rinse, rinse. The lungs will be little red spongy things stuck to the back ribs. Using a lung puller (yes, there is such a thing) or your fingers, scrape them loose. Rinse more. Make sure you've got the cavity all cleaned out. Then chill the birds as soon as possible. We put them in coolers with ice water.

Then they get packaged and frozen.

Or chopped up for dinner. Yumm. Don't you feel hungry now? These were old laying hens so they weren't tender like young broilers . Elly May cooked them in a low oven for 3 or 4 hours , braising them with a good Irish Stout. They were very tasty. They make up in flavor what they lack in tenderness.

Ta da!! It isn't that complicated. I tried to keep the pictures as least nauseating as I could while still showing the essentials. We'll go back to garden and duck posts here soon. ;-)

4 weeks old...

It has hard to believe that it has been 4 weeks since these little guys came into our lives. They have grown so much! And they are starting to have distinct personalities ....

Little Zooey... (like Zoe..) .. is the smallest , has the darkest bill... and is always behind. She loves to stuff her face though and is the best eater of grubs and other pest critters.

Marny there next to her is going to be quite the looker and already has a honk/quack thing going on . Don't you love her fat cheeks?

Ondine there in the middle with the really dark head and brown breast feathers loves the water. She'll just sit there... How fitting considering her name.

She is going to be so beautiful....

Vesper.. very stately.

After a bath we like to preen!

Penelope closest to my thumb there.. ..Comfrey.. yumm!!.. Who am I missing? Oh.. Jemima is in there somewhere.. They are becoming quite grown up don't you think? They should be fully feathered out soon. And much easier to tell apart. ;-)