Protein, pork crackling and red wine....

For all its sun drenched days and fresh air, there is a dark side to self sufficiency which cannot be avoided forever.  If you are a meat eater, how do you get your meat?

The first livestock we got on croft 1, was chickens.  The idea goes that you can buy in a a few hens for eggs (protein) a cockerel for the ladies and every year perhaps you'll be blessed with some baby chicks.

Our first brood of all natural chicks was a pure joy to watch. We put 2 broody hens aside in their own 'maternity wing' and just left them to get on with it.  As soon as each of their eggs hatched, the Mums decided to join forces and both moved into the same nesting box. It didn't seem to matter whose was whose, better together!

Unfortunately the cute bundles of fluff only lasts a couple of weeks and then the chicks enter the 'crow' phase.

It's not until months later that the average chicken keeper can tell whether they are boy chicks or girl chicks.  The idea is to keep any girl chicks to increase and replenish your egg laying flock, but fatten up any cockerels for the pot.
Nature seems to have its own timer for this part of the process.  I only keep one cockerel, because more than one and they fight... to the death.  As soon as the boy chicks are big enough to start cocker-doodle-doing its time to get the catching net out and set aside some time for preparing the bird for the freezer.

Mark has drawn the short straw when it comes to 'dispatching' our birds, but after researching a few different ways, he has developed a quick and as far as we can tell trauma free method.

When they all come out of the shed for breakfast, I hang around the feeding tubs and select the right bird. Whilst they're busy with breakfast I can grab the cockerel, hold him under my arm while he flaps and protests and put him into a pillow case - this immediately makes him go quiet and I can hand him over to Mark.  Mark uses a broomstick to stamp on the neck, breaking it immediately and hopefully the process is completed successfully.....  I say this has taken some practice, because one of the first times we tried it,  I went back to a 'dead' bird to start plucking and it blinked.... but that will only happen the once.

Meat from a free range chicken who has been running around all its life sounds ethically superior to the supermarket birds.  I have to admit that in reality they are chewier, thinner and create a bad atmosphere at the table when remembering their cute days.  However, it is meat and needs must.

When it came to the pigs, things got more complicated.

...how could you. :(

Pigs get big.  They arrive like little dogs and as the months go by they turn into large adult pigs.  Where I grew up on the Essex/Suffolk border, they farm pigs outdoors.  You can see them from the A14, enormous pink pork machines, living on the hillside with Anderson-shelter-style huts, so big that all I can see are the pound signs.  I am still debating with myself whether its better for these animals to be out in all weathers, in the mud and cold, or in a nice warm straw lain barn, 15 to a pen.... at least in the UK these are the only 2 options and our bacon does not come from an animal kept in a metal cage all its life, as is the case in other parts of Europe.

But I'm getting political, instead of enjoying what we had.

We bought in 2 Gloucester old Spot X pigs in the April and fed them until the October when they were big.
I had taken to measuring them with a bit of string. I had a handy formula for calculating their weight just by measuring the length of their back and their girth.

By this time, a bit like the Hungry Caterpillar, they had eaten their way through; 38 bags of pig nuts, 5 months of our leftover vegetable scraps, 4 months of vegetable scraps from a nearby pub, one small grassy yard, one field of rushes, and one concrete and polystyrene floor.
They were big now, wire haired and they had beady eyes.  One of them bit me one day and I was getting a bit scared of them too.

Pig bite

I can hear myself getting defensive here, because in reality, no matter how much you think that they have had a good life, it doesn't take away the day of saying goodbye and how sad that makes you feel.

 It didn't make a bad day better, that one of them escaped on the way to the trailer and shot off up the hill. It took us 3 hours to coax her back down with apples and pig nuts before she finally joined her brother in the trailer.  Mark drove them to the abattoir in town and they stood up all the way, ears flapping in the wind. It was only the last 3 miles when they lay down and went to sleep - it reminded me of my boys, they do the same thing on a car journey.

The abattoir asked us if we would like the heads back, when we came to collect the carcasses. I was worried I might recognise them, so I said no - I think they sell them on for an extra bonus.

Down to business though. The abattoir offered a butchery service which wasn't too expensive, but we save pennies in every ways so I did it myself. It took a Friday evening and most of the next day, but I completely filled our large chest freezer with joints, chops, bags of stew and put aside a back joint and a leg.  An unfortunate part of butchering is that I gave myself an 'idiot rash'. The knives were so sharp, I couldn't help but nick my hands here and there.  It made the next process smart - salting a bacon joint for streaky bacon and soaking a leg joint in brine to become a ham for Christmas.

But though it was tiring, I completed the job and we had a supply of the best tasting pork you could ever have.  It was the Ferrari of food, with the added joy of having reared them ourselves.  They were so much fun to have, it made up for the guilt of their ultimate end.  We will definitely have pigs again, though this time, we'll try to grow as much of their feed as we can.  Pork is an expensive meat to have, but maybe if we can combine it with a bit of chicken and a bit of lamb, we can make it last a whole year, and be more at ease with the process.

Christmas ham

The lambs

One of the best things we did this year, was finally starting our own flock of sheep.
After collecting a chest freezer full of milk from the shop across the road (they saved it from the bin when it reached the sell by date and would keep it in the freezer until we picked it up in the wheelbarrow!) we advertised on the noticeboard 'Wanted: Orphan Lambs'.
We'd been told that sometimes lambs get rejected by their mothers, and the process of finding them another Mum, or rearing them by hand can be too time consuming when you have a big flock. We on the other hand have 2 little boy 'lambs' of our own who would be very willing to put in the time and the cuddles necessary for the job.

A few weeks into lambing time, we had a call from our neighbour in the next village, Dolly.  We had a large old water tank filled with straw already installed in the kitchen by the radiator and so, Dolly the lamb arrived. (Named in honour of our benefactor, but also a double joke referring to the cloning station in Roselin.)

When Murdo, husband to Dolly (human) brought Dolly (lamb) up the drive dangling by the 2 front legs, I couldn't help but scoop her up in a blanket and treat her like a delicate thing.  But I didn't actually know what else to do.  Her Mum had died shortly after giving birth, so she had had a little colostrum, but not much else. Murdo had given her some milk via a tube into the stomache, so, as I had my bottle, my tube and my instructions on the packet I made up another sachet of colostrum and gave it a go.
Murdo had told me that unless you have 3 hands, it makes it easier to take a sip of the milk yourself, and put the tube in your mouth. I knew to sit the lamb accross my knees while sitting in a chair, but even with all the instructions and diagrams in my sheep keeprs book, it still took a while to get the hang of it.  But I managed to get Dolly to chew on my finger, then I slipped the tube into her mouth and down her throat, being careful not to get it down her windpipe. Then I let the milk out of my mouth and down the tube straight into her tummy.

Probably the best lucky dip ever!

I gave her a little at first and then put her back in her tub by the heater.  She was shaking after having the tube down her throat, so once she'd had a rest I tried with a bottle to get her sucking reflex going.
It took a while over the next couple of days to build her strength up because I didn't really know what signs to look for.  But once I saw some colostrum had gone in, I moved onto the milk.  Then one evening she was making some strange noises and when I looked in her bucket I could see she'd had a poo. My baby rearing experience suddenly clicked and I knew everything would be alright now!
Next she just needed some cuddles, so I passed her onto the correct department.

 

 

What more could one little boy need.

 It was just a few days before Dolly (human) rang to find out how we were getting on. By this time Dolly (lamb) was skipping about the sitting room, as lambs do, and investigating the great outdoors.

So did we want another she asked?
And so we nipped off that morning to pick up Murdo (lamb Murdo, not her husband)
When we got to their barn he was standing up in a cardboard box bleating at anyone he could see. Obviously stronger, he had been one of twins, but his mother had rejected him and concentrated all her efforts on the other lamb. He is a cheviot x, as opposed to Dolly who is a blackface, so he was already a bit bigger, but still in need of some care. He already had the sucking reflex as he'd had a few tummy fulls of milk, so it was easy to feed him straight from the bottle.
Before long the 2 of them were spending the sunny days outside in a makeshift pen and the nights in the wood shed together.

 
Then along came 'Shouty' - again from our generous neighbours Dolly and Murdo (humans) and so called by Morris because this one wouldn't shuttup! Shouty was another who had been given the energy of mothers milk, but had fallen on hard times shortly after.  We thought at this point we should probably take down the notice in the shop, but when Dolly (human) rang for the 4th time and I explained that Shouty was getting left out in the wood shed at night, she was relieved to say they had a sister for her.
So finally we gained 'Quiet', another Cheviot x who was very docile and needed some extra cuddles when she started to hit a low.  By this 4th one I realised there seemed to be a period where it wasn't just the milk they needed. Sometimes they would go a bit stiff and generally look depressed - of course, not surprising when they were obviously mourning the loss of their natural mother. So at this point I would sit them on my knee while I was at the laptop and the warm body contact was well received, just to let them know they're not alone.  Quiet pulled through and she is the prettiest of them all.

Look at those pink ears

 Our 4 lovely lambs.  We had used a range of 'care' styles from a tube into the stomache, to a cuddle of the sofa and our initial flock is established.

There were other things mentioned in the sheep rearing book that weren't so easy to negotiate. For starters, Murdo is a boy.... and we did not at this point in the flock, want to keep a Ram.  Also, sheep generally need to have their tails docked so that they don't get too long and pick up mud and dirt.  Mark did a quick ebay search and found a nifty tool - for £15.59 a solution appeared.  £14 for a pair of 'pliers' and £1.59 for 100 elastic bands and the sheep don't seem to feel anything at all. Our friends asked, while considering Murdo 'What are you going to do with them when they fall off...?'

 ...take a picture of course!

We have pampered this first 4 - they have had a hut to sleep in for the first 6 months of their lives, but now we have moved them into a second paddock with long fresh grass, we've used this as an excuse to remind them they are actually sheep and equipped to sleep outside.  One day they will be roaming around the fields further away and turning the brown grass into green by mowing and fertilising it for us.  Then when they move on next spring, we can start to advertise again for some more orphan lambs....

Happy workers in the best job ever