Gettting this started ---preparing for the winter

I'd been thinking of doing a blog to record some of our activities as we try to get a bit of a restart on our homesteading. We didn't get as much done this past summer as we hoped. We have a wood furnace coming in, but it looks like we won't get our solar panels up until next spring. We never did agree on a tractor to buy, so a lot of work we need it for didn't get done.

But we have gotten back into chickens and we've made steps to get our animal products that we can't raise ourselves locally. We've been buying milk and eggs, while waiting for our new girls to grow up, from Baum Farm. We have a freezer pig coming from a co-worker of mine, as well as half a steer from another local farmer. Our half a lamb isn't all that local, coming from our friend, Jenn, who will be butchering it herself in a class out a couple of hours or so from here in Vermont.

The same friend and her husband came out here on October 9th for our chicken sacrifice. After one of our 25 or so Dorking chicks had died on us and a couple of others got caught by a fox who visited while we were away (and who I caught snoozing on the porch next to the pen, with the chickens right up near that part of the fence also snoozing, one of my first days home), we were left with 12 cockerels and 10 pullets. This is along with the four hens and one rooster we've had for awhile, and the one pullet chick one of those hens, our 9 year old clucker, hatched. Of course, a farm, and hens, can only handle so many roosters, so our plans was to keep one Dorking boy. Another one is going to go to our friends.

This year we had killing cones and an automatic defeatherer, courtesy of a local farm group. The cones were helpful but I have to say that I NEVER want to do this again without the defeatherer. Seriously, what a difference! Because the plucking was always the most time consuming...the time when we felt all our grandmothers looking from The Other Side laughing at us.

Aaron gathered up 10 of the cockerels, leaving the two who were actually hanging more with the pullets than the others. Both the ones left are good looking birds, good size, feathering, five toes (actually they all had the five toes Dorkings are supposed to have, which is a first for us) and, apparently, more courtly and friendly with the girls. Which is important, we don't want a rooster who the hens don't like. Choosing the actual sacrifice, the bird for the Gods was still difficult, as they were really all fine and healthy. Just two were a bit undersized and "chased" looking...the lowest on the pecking order.

As always, I'd been stressed over the killing before we started. It's not a fun thing, it shouldn't be, as far as I'm concerned. It should be hard. But it's also very spiritual for me. I did the sacrifice first, which also allowed me to connect fully with the Goddess I serve, and the four of us took his body up to the temple area.

With 9 left we did three, then took them to be scalded (to loosen the feathers) and put in the defeatherer. Um, didn't really dunk them long enough so it took a bit longer and we had to hand pluck those quite a bit. BTW, while it's a wonderful thing, it's kinda gruesome to watch. I fully beheaded the chickens (we kill by cutting the throat) first, which made it less gruesome than some of the videos of these things we watched the night before (as we hadn't used one before we wanted to see one at work first) where the chickens still had heads. They were clearly dead, but not so obviously so which made it look worse.

The next ones we dunked longer and it worked better. After doing the next three, while our friends continued to clean them, Aaron and I killed the last three. This made the process much faster. Working with others is a big plus compared to just us, so I'm thinking we might consider that next year, when they have their first mixed hatch (they got pullets this year), maybe we can spend a day helping them and they can spend a day helping us.

After a bit of haggling, we sent them home with two of the processed chickens. They wanted to only take one, but agreed to take the second on the grounds that she'll cook it for us sometime when we visit. Damn it! I should have made them take THREE and have her cook two for us. ~;p (She's an excellent cook, a professional foodie, even, The Leftover Queen) One of the two remaining boys is theirs, but they wanted to wait until they got things set up a bit more rather than just "throw him to the girls" with the way things are set up. So they'll get him when we get our lamb from her. Works out well.

Um, as long as the fox doesn't come around and one of the boys throws himself at it.

The other will be a second rooster here...we'll be breeding some pure Dorking, but also some hybrids with our red rooster with the Dorking hens and with this guy and the hybrid hens to give us some bigger eggs.

I just finished eating some of the chicken soup that we made from the remains of the first chicken we ate. Our pullets are becoming hens and we're getting eggs now, although still supplementing from Baum Farm for the moment. I'm starting to feel like we really are getting back into this. There's no reason why we should be buying any more meat from far away sources again, or any at all for another year.

So next year as well as doing this again (well, not buying chicks but breeding our own) we intend to get moving on our vegetable consumption. We did get local veggies all summer, but didn't do so well in getting in a garden or with getting into preservation so we're a bit stuck as we're going into winter. We're still getting some local carrots and lettuce, though. But next year, we'll do better on that.