"The Most Gorgeous Moist Meat Imaginable"

Our own 6kg ham 'glazed' (more like 'pasted') with a mix of
mustard powder and brown sugar. 

Well, we have all done and dusted our own Christmasses and Facebook has been a blizzard of pictures of our friends and relatives table spreads, food, children, toys, Santa pictures and all that jazz. It has been lovely to see  and I do not think I would add anything by a load of similar pics from here but I would like to just sneak in a couple of bits from our own, small holder, angle. For just the pair of us we probably went way too mad on quantities, certainly of meat, but for our first year we suddenly had our own turkey available and our own ham joint.

A 17 lb turkey at this end of the table, a 14 lb ham at the other.

We had done pigs in 2014 but had only salt-cured the bellies for bacon rashers so this year it was a bit of an adventure when we decided to brine a whole ham and to dry-cure and air-dry a whole leg for "Parma" ham. The ham joint was brined in a solution of just table salt, sugar and spices, rather than the "curing salt" used by some of the commercial boys. Curing salt includes sodium nitrite and potassium nitrite as well as the nitrates.

The Christmas tree lights up the Living Room window .

It is the nitrites which give supermarket hams their bright, artificial pink colour (as well as the fact that the brine is injected deep into the muscle blocks so that the meat can be so full of water that the cooked joint still weighs 20% more than the freshly slaughtered version!). Nitrites have also, I believe, been linked to carcinogen (nitrosamine) chemistry. We decided to leave out the nitrites and go for a pale, more pork-like joint and we were very pleased with the result. We will definitely do it this way again.

Pies and Quiches made of left overs. 

As to the HUGE turkey (17 lbs), we knew when we killed this one it would be way too big for the two of us but we are nothing if not GOOD at left overs. Not for us this widely bandied around statistic that "we" waste on average 30% of our bought food by letting it go out of code or scraping our "eyes bigger than bellies" portions into the compost bucket after the meal. Our plates contain, if you are lucky, a few bones picked so clean that they could appear as dried, sun-bleached skeletons in a cowboy film and any over-production tends to come back and back and back again as cold meat, stews, risottos, curries, pies, quiches, rice or cous-cous salads, or portions frozen for future use.

A pink gin and a new "Irish Larder" apron. The tools of
a genius chef?

Having spent much of my working life as a Stock Control Manager, I am probably OCD on stock rotation, so very little goes out of code. We knew that this bad-boy would have a few slices of breast carved off him for the day and some leg meat but that he would then enjoy a long and happy career in the left overs dept.

Regular readers will also know that this turkey was a 'bronze' old fashion 'heritage' variety. We only acquired our first turkeys (Tom and Barbara) this Spring and when these birds started cranking out eggs we decided to hatch a few (and gave some to friends for hatching) and see how we got on. They were a revelation - the growth rates blew us away and if you have read the recent posts you'll know that we were killing them at only 5-6 months old at 6+ kg for the hen and 8+ kg for the 'stags', oven ready weight. Way too big for a two-some on the 25th but Liz just fancied cooking a whole bird for the table, so we did.

A heated clothes airer. A GENIUS present for
two hard-pressed Roscommon smallholders who
have not seen a washing-line drying day for
months! Thank you, Santa; you know who
 you are (!)

Bro-in-Law 'Sparks' had cooked one of ours on the 11th and reported back favourably on the taste and the succulence. He cooked his in his fancy new deep-bath American fast-fryer, in 50 minutes or there abouts and told us that the succulence was not grease/fat from the fryer, but genuine meat juices flowing out of the meat as it relaxed. That fact  everyone knows about poultry is that you test for done-ness by stabbing it and making sure the juice runs clear but I had not seen in all my growing up with mass-produced (intensively reared) turkeys any great quantities of this juice.

Turkey Jelly.

Commercial birds these days are all white-feathered, double muscled highly bred birds. The 'stags' (males) are so big that they cannot mate with the hens, so all 'sex' is by artificial insemination. Apparently that well known entity, the 'public' preferred the white birds because there was no dark, unsightly 'stubble' from the plucking and the farmers love the double-muscled format for the huge weight gain +/- growth promoting chemicals - those 26 lb birds you see advertised.

Christmas Eve full moon.

We carved our birdy on our posh carving board with its stippled 'hedgehog' central area which grips the meat and its various channels which take the juices and guide them into quite a big well. We were amazed to see, after lunch, that this well was full of juices. These juices set into a jelly like the one you used to get under the 'dripping'. Liz (who has spent a bit of time in France) tells me that this 'gellée' would be highly prized in France and would be dolloped on top of your hot buttered toast and paté at breakfast time. So that was our breakfast on St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day) and very nice it was too.

The chooks have now chosen a new
place to stash eggs - out in the car port
twixt wall, pallets, bike and 2CV.

Meanwhile, I know that our friends in Kent, Miles and Paul had bought and grown the same variety of turkeys as we did and after their Christmas dinner they reported the turkey as being "The Most Gorgeous Moist Meat Imaginable", so there is back-up proof if ever you needed it.

We should also confess to a small amount of smugness that a lot of the other ingredients of the table were from our own 'farm', all be it a couple were last year's. Only the sprouts failed us this year - it was a bad year here for the brassica family. Our carrots were there and parsnips, our onion in the gravy, our red cabbage (from 2014) in the spiced cabbage, our parsley in the sauce, our spuds as the roasties, our eggs in the 'real custard' Liz made for the pud. Even the pud was home made (last year - we made too many!) though not from our ingredients.

I will leave you, hopefully as well fed as we were, with this pic of the tree, which is suffering a bit from abuse by the new cat, Soldier. I guess the cats are entitled to 'enjoy' Christmas as much as we are.

Of Beltex Sires

We have already posted that this year's lambs are standard white, not the deep chocolate brown of last year's Jacob x Texel cherubs. These are from the same Mums, Kenny's Texel ewes but this year he has used a 'Beltex' sire, he tells us, which should produce a meatier carcass which the butchers will love. He is way more experienced and knowledgeable than us but happily admits to not knowing 'it all' and keeps trying different combinations of sire and dam to see what works best for his Irishtown (Co Mayo) farm and the grass and weather conditions.

We just get some lambs from him which have fallen a bit behind and not 'finished' as quickly as his best lambs. It is up to us to lavish what attention we can on them to catch them up or let them make the weight (or not) at a slower pace as suits us. If he chooses a Beltex ram (this year he borrowed him from a friend) then that's what we get. I had never heard of Beltex, so was reduced to googling the breed on the internet where, of course, there is more information than you can shake a stick at.

Interestingly the best website we came across was one covering a Connemara market close to us,

http://www.maamcrossmart.com/historysheepbeltex.htm

If I can shamelessly plagiarize for a few minutes, I now know that.....

" Beltex sheep were first introduced to Ireland from Belgium in the 1980 s. They originated from hybrid sheep bred in Belgium. The breed's main characteristics are double-muscled hindquarters, coupled with fine bones, which ensures maximum killing-out percentage of the finished lamb.Beltex is primarily a terminal sire to cross with Irish sheep and half-bred continental sheep. Beltex-sired lambs are born with ease and are thrifty.Conformation is the breed's main main attribute in producing prime lamb.Finished lambs yield a high killing-out percentage and a carcase with well-fleshed legs, good eye muscle and a long loin. The finished lamb is sought after for its superior conformation both in the home and export market.Breeders have found that quality prime lambs can be produced economically at 18 to 26 kg carcase weight, killing out at 60 per cent. Crossed with smaller ewes they are also suitable for the lightweight export market".

I have to say that 'double muscling' is not anything I really wanted to get involved in. I find the cattle which feature this trait, like Belgian Blues, slightly obscene. They have the extra block of muscle on their rump and down each hind leg like some pumped up, steroid-loaded weight lifter. They fall into that category of things which are bred TOO MUCH by mankind, along with most double and treble flowered plants and too-inbred show-dogs like those funny looking slouched-at-the-back German Shepherd dogs and, ultimately, GM food plants. I am much more comfortable with simpler flowers and traditional breeds and varieties of animals. This might be a half-baked situation which needs some thinking through

Anyway, I am pleased that our lambs are only 'sired by' a Beltex, not pure bred Beltex. They have picked up some of the meat-producing genes but do not show the 'pedigree' double muscling.

Our job, as last year, is to teach them to love us and persuade them to put on lots of weight eating our grass and a feed mix known as 'Fast Lamb Crunch'. So far the 'love us' thing is not going spectacularly well. Last year's lambs came to us straight off their Mums, and their Mums had been fed every day with 'Ewe and Lamb Nuts' which meant that they were used to racing towards Kenny expecting a feed when their Mums heard the rattle of the bucket. We just took over the process and quickly had them feeding out of our hands and hand-held buckets. Once you have done that you can confidently lead them out for a graze of the un-fenced lawn, for example, knowing that when you have done you can lead them back to their field by rattling the bucket.

[Ducklings get a first bath today]

These lambs have been separated from their Mums for three weeks now and seem to have forgotten about buckets and racing to the nearest human. If I go into the field they eye me suspiciously. They wait till I have put down the bucket and retreated and then, at some quiet point between then and my next visit they sneak over to the bucket and eat the meal.

Even that is new - they did not even eat it for the first few days. They would move off if I approached always keeping 50 yards or so between us. That, at least, is getting better. They are getting used to me and let me get to within 10 yards. I am moving the bucket a bit closer each day, hoping that soon I will be able to bring it to the gate and call them over. I am also amazed by how quiet they are. Last year's lambs seemed to be always baa-ing, greeting us as we came home, asking for food, shouting to each other. You never hear these guys! Maybe as they get more used to us and start to enjoy and want the feed, they will start talking to us. Funny little things, sheep.....

Here was a curious thing. I noticed that a couple of the large white caterpillars feeding on some nasturtiums in the yard appeared to have climbed up onto the leaves of a young Kniphofia (red hot poker) and stopped by a pale yellow 'egg mass' each. The masses were attached to the leaves by a web of silken threads and the caterpillars looked for all the world like they were standing guard. They never moved and were not eating, but looked intact and 'healthy'. I photo'd them and posted the picture on the Kent Wildlife Trust pages of Facebook asking what this was all about.

It turns out that they are not healthy or standing guard. Insect expert Jill Ireland tells me that these are "cabbage white butterfly caterpillars which have been parasitized. The larvae of the parasite have crawled out from the host and pupated themselves after eating the living insides of the caterpillar". The caterpillar is just a drying husk. The culprit is a solitary wasp called a 'braconid' known to his friends as "Apanteles glomeratus". This is a wildlife garden, so we are actually delighted that this gruesome event has been played out here - we have an ever more complex food web building up. We find it fascinating.