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