Cull a Cock Curry

Skinny light-weights. These roosters we are
culling are not even 21 weeks old yet, so
they are only making weights of 1.5-1.7 kg
in oven-ready form.

A genuinely short post this time as very little is currently happening. Even the one positive 'story' we had planned for today was postponed for 2 weeks. That was the arrival of our two new Guinea hens. The friend who was going to arrive with them was not, for various reasons, able to identify 2 females for us and then isolate them. Sexing Guinea Fowl is notoriously hard and usually based upon the females calling "buckwheat buckwheat" and the males not. If you are looking at a pen full of birds who are not calling, you are a bit stumped, as you can imagine. Better luck in the next fortnight, Billy.

What's in YOUR freezer? Although ours (plural) are well set
up, organized and everything labelled we do sometimes get nice
surprises, like this goodly rack of venison chops.

We have started the process of culling out these spare roosters. I killed 2 last night after lock-up. Going in there in the dark with just the head torch is the quietest way we have found. Nobody panics around flapping. The bird just allows himself to be "grabbed" enfolding his wings and carried out. Our normal system here is for me to rear and then kill the birds, which are then presented to Liz who processes them through the plucking and cleaning out stages. She loves that job and gets herself set up with a Radio 4 "In Our Time" pod or an Agatha Christie play on the laptop.

4 litres of goat's milk for the next cheese.
Thanks Sue and Rob.

The roosters here are being culled out to remove a 'too many men' problem, rather than because they are ready to eat. They are less than 21 weeks old so quite light-weight and, when plucked out look very rangy and skinny. They weigh in, oven-ready, at 1.5 to 1.7 kg which looks and feels very little when you are used to meaty Hubbard carcasses which go 3.5 kg at 80 days.

Ginger Wine (also from S+R). Sweet and
a bit 'viscous', more like a liqueur.

We don't mind that at all though. The Hubbards we always joint up prior to freezing because the two of us cannot manage more than a few bits (a thigh each or maybe 2 drumsticks). These little fellas do not need any of that - we will roast (or curry, or 'au vin', or spatch-cock or whatever) the whole bird and eat half each like you would with a poussin.

Cream cheese under construction. 

We took our fertile (we hope) duck eggs over to Sue and Rob's to go in their incubator, this being our plan to up the number of ducks on site. I took, as well, a load of empty plastic 2 and 3 litre milk bottles, which they use for the goat milking. I also took a small incubator part (con-rod for the egg rocker servo) which I had repaired, plus got a chance to admire their newly borrowed Suffolk ram. This guy has come from a nearby farm and was the lad we were also going to use but we then decided to keep bought-in ram lamb 'Pedro'. He is 4 years old, big and magnificent. He has already been 'at work', Rob told me, so they are hoping for lambs in April.

"Play" Station? Liz is inputting the entire text of the Drama
Group's chosen play into a word document.

When you go to S+R's bearing gifts, you never seem to come away empty handed. I came away with 4 litres of goat's milk, a bottle of ginger wine to try and a stack of old egg boxes, useful for when we next in 'glut' mode. Thanks Sue and Rob. You guys are the salt of the earth.

That's about it. Just a couple more pics because I have them. This one is of me sitting down to enjoy a farming 'pod' and quickly being invaded by dog 'Towser' and cat 'Chivers'. It was taken by Liz but I was very amused by the state of my feet which look about 2" too long and pointy at the ends. My socks must have ridden down when I was last in my wellies and I have not noticed. Ah well.

Then we found in the fridge, in need of using up by Stir-up Sunday, one of last year's Christmas puds - it frees up the silver thru'pences and the basin, you understand. In this house we go with the Hastings tradition of making the recipient of the slice choose whether the server cut to their left or right, so that they cannot see the coinage sticking out and 'cheat'. Here the coin is arrowed in yellow. And , no, I am not going to wish anyone a 'Merry Christmas' just yet - it's still early November.