NSO, Chicken Review & Snipped

There's actually not much to review in my latest No Spend Month.  October was officially a bomb.

Between vehicle and homestead equipment expenses, weak-willed trips past the take-out pizza joint,  kid clothing and Halloween candy, it ended up being a pretty spendy No Spend October.  I even gave up tallying the cash outlays after the second week.

So I failed, and pretty miserably at that.  But you know what?  There's always next month.  Or the next, next month.  January sounds like a good time to try again.  There's no way I can even pretend to not spend money during the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons.  Not that I'll be looking to bust the bank or anything, but let's be realistic.  Although I could possibly kill a wild turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, those French's Fried Onions required for the obligatory Green Bean Casserole just ain't gonn'a pop up in my garden.  And last time I checked, my non-existent mushroom log was still pretty much non-existent and we have to have homemade cream of mushroom soup with Christmas dinner.  A grocery-shopping I will go.

On the livestock front......most of the Creepy Meats are still with us.  But we were down by two before I even started butchering on Sunday.  The first one drowned a few weeks ago because of my stupidity and I went to feed the birds a last week and found another one of them dead.  Not picked at, not decapitated by a hungry opossum, just dead.  I have to get the remaining seventeen birds butchered ASAP.  They are over nine weeks old now, they won't be getting much bigger and I'm sick of spending ten bucks for each fifty pound bag of feed....that they go through in about five days.

I also found one of my homegrown chicks laying by the corner of the barn.  Dead.  And I guess it happened just before I went in the goat / chicken pen as it was still warm and very flexible.  No peck marks, no feathers missing.  Just dead.  That same evening while I was milking, Rhiannon came up to me with a chick in her hands.  As they are usually very spry and mobile, I was surprised that Rhiannon actually caught one.  But when she gave it to me, it was in no mood to flap or run away, it just looked really, really tired.  I put it in a small pen with food and water.  Then next day, it was dead.  Of course, the two deceased homegrown chicks were hens; I'm going to end up with a dozen stinking roosters.  I hope that there's not some chicken pandemic going on in our barnyard.  I don't even know how to treat them as I'm don't know why they are keeling over.  If anymore of them die, I may do an autopsy in an attempt to see what the problem is.

On a happier note, guess who showed up on Sunday afternoon?

Wallace came back for a visit!  Well, most of him anyhow.  What do I mean by "most" of him?  He had been relieved of his, uhm, manly package and was sporting a new collar with a rabies tag on it!  I'm so glad that he's fixed now.  I was going to bite the bullet and take him to the vet the next time he stayed for a visit, but he hadn't been around for a while.  His fur also seemed a little softer.  The neighbor about a half-mile up the road mentioned occasionally seeing him and feeding him, so I'll have to inquire if it was he that took him to the vet or if his "owner" finally realized that it's irresponsible to let your dog wander without an ID and ultra-irresponsible to let your intact dog wander the county.

Wallace only stayed for a few hours, following me for evening barn chores, running around with Rhiannon and chewing on one of the numerous bones in the yard.  I was happy to see him, and even happier to see less of a particular part of him.

Sandy who?

Ok, first let me start by saying that I hope that any of my blogging friends in Sandy's huge path have weathered the storm without much damage.  And if you have, I pray you are able to get back to normal quickly.

Being so far inland, we haven't had seen a single drop of rain nor much more than a slight rustling of the leaves.  The nighttime temperatures have been in the low thirties for the past few days, but our daytime highs are supposed to be in the mid to upper 60's.  I actually wish Sandy would have graced us with some of that moisture as we are technically still in a drought situation.

But what I'd really like to rant about is the news.  I'll be the first to admit to taking advantage of modern-day weather forecasting advances.....I'm an internet radar junkie.  But "Frankenstorm", "Superstorm", "Storm Crisis"......"We're ALL going to DIE" headlines?  Once again, please don't take it that I'm undermining those that have suffered from the storm, but come on.  The conspiracy half of me says that this is just a wonderful opportunity for the news outlets to distract us from the upcoming train wreck election.  Not that I mind a break in the political crap and I haven't even watched any of the debates online or anything!  But even around our little town, there are "Romney" and "Obama" signs everywhere, not to mention the local political hacks littering the roadsides with their garbage.

It's as if every neighbor is trying to outdo their neighbor by the size and number of "their" candidate's political junk.  My stepfather and the neighbor directly across from them each put up a small sign in their yard professing their loyalty.  Then about a week later, the neighbor two doors down put up a HUGE sign, probably 4' high x 12' long stating where her loyalty lies (pun most definitely intended).....the other candidate of course.

I'm sure there are many, many heated arguments occurring between good friends regarding as to why their choice is best for the country.  But what disappoints me most is the blind, unwavering trust that a person has for their candidate.  You know, the Republican or the Democrat.  Because that guy is going to turn things around.  My candidate truly cares for me.  And if the other guy wins, the country will go down the toilet.  Do you really think your political champion has one iota of compassion for you, personally?  How about doing some real research on the candidates people??

I'd bet my best milking doe that not a quarter of the people who are the most vocal about the election have actually done a lick of research into the candidates.  Their "knowledge" of the politician is whatever they glean from the vicious political ads and what the talking heads have to say on CNN.

What is their voting record?  Have they kept to promises made in the campaigns?  Are there illegal things that candidate has admittedly done, yet hasn't been held accountable for?  And most importantly, are they UPHOLDING THE CONSTITUTION?

Wake up people.  The country has been going down the toilet for years now.  It doesn't matter one lick if a Democrat or a Republican wins this election; they are two sides of the same coin.  And quit telling people that they are wasting their vote if they decide to vote for someone other than the D or R guy.  Why settle for something you don't believe in, just to spite the other candidate? If you haven't yet noticed that it makes very little difference who's in the White House then you need to do a little more research and think about our elected civil servants more than every four years.

And, for those of you who may be into posting signs in your yard, here's one I created myself (with help from graphic-artist seester, of course!).  Feel free to copy it and litter your yard with them.  Or slap them over your neighbor's poster.  But I didn't say that.

So there's my last political rant for this year.  Well, maybe.

Farmish Nuances

Hey honey, would you mind passing me that bucket of chicken?

So.  Did images of a cardboard tub filled with fried chicken pop into your head?

Or did you envision something more along the lines of this?

How about putting on your boots to go out?  Do you think of these:

.....with the intention of going into town for dinner, a movie and some dancing?

Or these:

.....because you don't want to ruin the only semi-good pair of shoes you have with runny chicken crap?

How about going into town to pick up chicks?  This:

Or this:

Can you imagine if you (a farmgal/guy) were overheard talking to another farmgal/guy at a city restaurant about having to slaughter the kids over the weekend because you didn't want to deal with them anymore?  Or the shocked looks you'd get from city-menfolk when you were discussing castrating the bull calves?

Have you ever had any misunderstandings caused by the misinterpretation of farmish lingo?  If so, please share so we can all enjoy your story!

Meat Week - Overview and Thoughts

If I haven't totally alienated my vegetarian or kind'a-vegetarian followers this past week, I'd be surprised.  You'd have to admit, it was a pretty grueling raw-flank-steak-slap-in-your-face kind'a week.  And if you've made it through without thinking I'm a murderous, heartless, bambi-killing fiend, I'd be doubly-surprised.

Hey!  Here comes a nice lady, maybe she'll
give me something to  ***SPLAMO!!!***

But if you've stayed with me through this all, I'd like to say "Thanks!"  And I hope that you've found it either amusing, entertaining or even a little bit informative.

I think I've taken you through quite the meat gauntlet lately; squirrel, deer, chicken, goat and pork.  I guess I could have put in an honorable mention for "Fish", but according to a certain someone I know, fish don't think so they are not considered meat :)  Oh, and speaking of fish, I saw a billboard recently for Long John Silvers and it has a picture of one of their fish meals with the caption "Fish don't have feelings".  I'm not sure how I was supposed to take that bit of mega-sized advertisment, but  I'm a bit confused.  Was it a joke or do they really think that fish don't have feelings?  Admittedly, I'm the last person you'd think would be offended by an ad for fried fish, but it did seem kind of brash to assume that fish don't feel.  I mean, now do they know?  Do they speak "fish"?  And I'm not even one of those freaky save-the-sardines-tofu-eating kind'a gal.

Anyhow....where was I.  Oh yeah.  I have to admit that after all this meat-talk I'm craving some pasta and broccoli smothered in a garlic cream sauce alongside a salad bursting with onions, tomatoes, mushrooms and some parmesan bread sticks.  Not a lick of meat in that anywhere and totally guilt free.  Unless of course you think that tomatoes have feelings.

Paul and I have been talking about our somewhat backwards and maybe even slightly artery-clogging way of stocking our pantry.  As self-proclaimed wanna-be homesteaders, it would seem that growing vegetables as the main part of our diet and pantry would be healthier and cheaper.  Goodness knows that we don't need to include a slab of flesh at every meal.  But when I do occasionally make a vegetarian supper, Paul is always a little disappointed, even if he doesn't say anything.  He's a meat and potatoes kind'a guy.  Not that I blame him.

Raising meat is more expensive than growing vegetables and requires us to become less self-sufficient.  With the exception of the wild game, every chicken dinner, pork chop and goat tenderloin requires us to purchase grain and hay to feed those animals.  And as anyone without their head under a very large rock knows, the price of grain and hay has increased every single year, this year being the worst because of the far reaching drought here in the US.  In a perfect homestead, we would be able to free range our chickens, goats, pigs, rabbits, etc. on pasture and the bountiful wild fruits and nuts of the forest.  But alas, we don't have the fencing for that yet.  And honestly, we'd probably still need to provide them with supplemental grain and hay in the winter.

There is also a lot of expensive infrastructure involved with raising animals like housing and fencing.  Veterinarian care, medicine, supplements and overall daily care, feeding and watering of those animals.  Vacations are basically non-existent when livestock is involved.  And of course, there's the taking of a life.  Not a particularly fun thing to do.  Unless it's the pecker-headed rooster.  Then it's fun.

So maybe we need to shift our focus to the gardens this fall and winter.  Things like improving the garden soil, increasing the size of the gardens, fencing the new areas and making some sort of irrigation system to make watering less time consuming.  Because even though I hate weeding, I hate watering even more.

Even if we managed to get a kick-butt garden going, I don't know if I'd ever go vegetarian.  I like bacon way too much.  

And I admit I'd rather spend time mucking out animal stalls than picking squash bugs off the zucchini plants.  I can sit and watch the chickens and goats all day.  And although I frequently gaze at the beauty of a squash blossom or the inhale the wonderful smell the fresh basil, it just isn't the same as working with the critters.

But I know that I have to up the ante on our fruit and vegetable production.  And I have to thank some of my blogging buddies for the gardening inspiration (Mama Pea, SciFiChick, Erin, Jane and Erica to name just a few).  I guess this realization comes at a perfect time in the year.  Most of the garden area we do have has already been put to bed for the season so I can focus on new garden areas, building up soil and putting up fence when it's not a million degrees outside.

Meat Week - Goat

We have been raising dairy goats for six years now.  In order to continue getting milk from our dairy herd, the does have to be bred every fall for spring kidding.  Female kids are either kept with us for future milkers or sold as pets or milkers.  The males have one of three fates; sold as a pet wether (castrated male), sold as an intact buckling for a future herd-sire, or put into the freezer.

The first two years Nettie gave us doelings, but the third year she kidded with Annette (whom we still have) and a male kid.  I had been prepping myself for the possibility of having to butcher any of the unwanted kids so it really wasn't a shock.

Since the male dairy kids are so scrawny, it doesn't really make much sense to keep them very long for the freezer; it just takes too much time to get them large enough to go through the butchering.  I've heard that some people just kill the male kids at birth and dress them out like a rabbit, but I haven't had the heart to do that.  Yeah, I know, I end up killing it anyhow, but the cuteness factor is just too strong.  By the time the males are several months old, I can't wait to get rid of them, be it by a sale or by putting him in the freezer.

Once I tasted goat meat, I was hooked.  Goat ribs being my favorite.  Well second favorite I guess.  Nothing beats a tenderloin sauteed with garlic, butter and onions.

Since the male dairy kids were not really economical and I still wanted goat meat in the freezer, I went and started our own little Boer Goat herd this summer.  I brought home Pickles, the orphaned bottle baby Boer doeling this August and just last month bought Herman and Lily.  Since they are still young, we won't have any meaty-goat meat for over a year.  I don't plan on breeding Pickles or Lily for several more months, and their kids wont be born until five months after that.  And if the kids are of keeping quality, they will become part of our breeding -  not eating - stock.   But you got to start somewhere and sometime.

Technically, there's a pretty good chance that either Nettie or Annette will have a male kid next Spring.  And if we can't find homes for them, scrawny dairy kid or not, goat ribs will be back on the menu.

And here's some useful nutritional information comparing goat meat to other "normal" meats:

See, Christine?  You'd be better off eating goat meat since you always seem to be on a diet!  I'll even slap the meat on one of those styrofoam meat trays and wrap it in plastic for you!

Meat Week - Italian Sausage

Yup.  Another installation of Meat Week and another sausage tutorial.

Unlike the breakfast sausage we made earlier in the week, we wanted to have the Italian sausage in links.  So in order to have links, one must procure casings for the ground sausage.  I love the "snap" from a natural casing, so we went that route, but you could also use the collagen-based casings although I'm not sure if the prep for those casings are different.  You'll have to do your own homework on that one.

During the week I went to the butcher shop in one of our little grocery stores in town to get the casings (be damned, NSO!!).  The man behind the counter handed Paul a little package that looked pretty much like skinny and dry tapeworms. Sorry for the grotesque image, but that's exactly what it looked like.  I rinsed them in cold water to remove the salt, put 'em in a bowl of clean, cold water then stuck it in the fridge overnight.

This morning was sausage-making day.  I cut up the frozen fatback into small chunks and put it through the grinder:

Chopping frozen fatback.  Watch out for flying chunks!

You weren't thinking of putting that back into the sausage, were you?

After the fatback went through the grinder, I put the previously ground (but not seasoned) venison through the grinder again with the fatback:

We then used the bowl on the Kitchen Aid to mix the sausage, fatback and spices up.  Don't know why I didn't think of using the mixer when we made breakfast sausage.  Duh.

Since this recipe is a hodge-podge of what I found online, it was time to taste-test the Italian sausage:

The recipe is a keeper!  On with the sausage stuffing.

Now that we had our bulk Italian Sausage ready for stuffing, the grinder attachment was taken off and the sausage stuffer parts put on the Kitchen Aid. Paul then took the casings out of the water, rinsed them off in the sink and cut off a length about ten feet long.

You lube up the sausage tube with a little bit of lard, then slide the casings over it and scrunch it up at the end, kind'a like you're putting pantie hose on the tube (Or a male prophylactic.  Come on, I can't be the only one thinking that).

Once the length of casing is on the tube, tie a knot in the end of it (easier said than done) and pull it tight against the end of the tube.  Then poke a tiny hole in the end to let air out.  At this point the picture-taking is paused because as Paul is cramming the bulk sausage through the stuffer, I'm catching the sausage-filled cases, pinching them off at about 6" in length and twisting the sausage around as to make a new sausage in the line.

Four pounds of sausage yielded sixteen 6" long links and we used approximately 10' of casings with extra to spare for tying off.  

The sausage texture ended up being a bit too fine.  I "forgot" that the venison was already ground up when we started so we should have just ground the fatback alone then mixed the fat, spices and already-ground meat up without putting it through the grinder again.  I think the finer textured sausage would have been perfect for smaller breakfast links, but the larger Italian sausages should have had a coarser texture.  Not that that's going to prevent us from eating them.  

Now all I have to do is find some fresh green peppers, make some Italian bread and we're set for supper!

Venison Italian Sausage*

3 pounds venison

1 pound pork fatback

1 1/2 tsp. garlic salt

1 tsp. black pepper

2 Tbsp. fennel seeds

2 1/2 tsp. red pepper

1 tsp. oregano

1/4 tsp. marjoram

*Every single venison sausage recipe I found called for fatty pork or pork shoulders or part ground pork and part fatback.  Although we have a ton of pork products in the freezer, I didn't have any plain ground pork (it was already made into breakfast sausage) nor did I want to defrost pork chops in order to grind them up to use in a recipe.  So I crossed my fingers and hoped that a 3:1 venison to plain fatback would be good enough.

*I also noticed that I forgot to add the obligatory 1/2 to 1 cup of ice water that is mentioned in every sausage recipe I've ever seen.  But nothing bad has happened.  Yet.

Meat Week - Cornish Cross Meat Birds

First of all, I'd like to thank whichever blogger buddy of mine (OFG, possibly??) coined the term "Creepy Meats", as I now use it almost exclusively.

And the term is very fitting.  Those cute little white fuzzballs rapidly turn into eating, crapping, increasing-in-size-before-your-very-eyes vicious blobs of meat.  Well, maybe not exactly vicious, but definitely very food aggressive.  I hate going into the Creepy Meat's kennel.  Every morning they come at me like crazy-insane I'd-peck-your-eye-out-if-only-I-could-flap-my-feathered-mass-up-to-your-head avian monsters.  As if they haven't had food in weeks.  And they get fed mass quantities of commercial chicken feed, grain mixes, fresh vegetable scraps and even raw meat.  Two, sometimes three times a day.

And they really do grow that fast.  In just eight weeks, you can have a dressed-out chicken weighing in at four, even five pounds (a bit longer).  Oh, and a lot of smelly poop.  Which is why we put them outdoors as soon as they are feathered out and no longer require supplemental heating.  The live the rest of their existence in a large chain link dog kennel or our homemade chicken tractor.  When the area underneath their living quarters get too sloppy, the house is moved to a new spot.  This also gives them something fresh and green to eat (and crap on) and spreads the fresh fertilizer around a bit.

The first two years we got fifty chicks in the spring and butchered in early summer.  One of those first years the summer was dreadfully hot right around butchering time and we had one keel over from heat exhaustion.  And even though we butchered in the early morning, it was really still too warm to do so.

So the past three years we've raised the Creepy Meats in the fall for butchering the first week or so of November.  This timing not only makes for much cooler butchering weather, but it also provides a rare opportunity for us to get a bunch of free food for the chickens.  The volunteer fire department that Paul and I are members of have an annual Pork Roast the first week of every October.  And when it comes time to pulling all the fat and gristle off those pork butts to get ready for the hungry masses, we put the scraps in heavy duty garbage bags and take all that pork-goodness home for the meat birds (ok, some goes to the dog & cats).  They go through about fifty pounds of smoked pork scraps in a week.  And this year they also got the scraps from butchering the deer.  Got to love free chicken feed!

If you're really interested in our chicken processing efforts, click HERE for last year's batch as this year's Creepy Meats still have another week or so until it's "time".  Normally we just put the whole processed chicken in plastic wrap and stuff them into the freezer but since freezer space is at a premium this year I may end up quartering them, canning the breast meat and then freezing the legs, thighs and wings.

Oh, and does anybody have a totally foolproof recipe for fried chicken?  I tried making it last year and it was, well, edible, but not fried chicken'y like at all.  It just drives me completely bonkers that I can't make fried chicken.