cooking the chicken, and all that

[veggiechicken]

I assume you telling me to read the t&c means you feel I have violated them - sorry. If I get this reaction to simple posts I will move on if told my style is inappropriate. I will take this as a warning, not sure what for - so sorry for offending.

Hi Kimble, let me explain - its nothing personal!
Many people join the forum and are unaware of, or don't read, the small print in the T&Cs, which they have accepted when joining. The link is there, in case you missed it.
In fact, I'm going to take this opportunity to reread them myself!
I recommend anyone reading this thread to have a read too http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...-cs_28310.html

[ancee]

Kimble, you sound quite a lot like my OH. His parents are from Cyprus and think nothing of killing stuff to eat. He says it's because when the war was on and food was scarce they basically ate whatever was edible! My mother in law could make an amazing meal out of weeds!
He also has the theory that if you kill an animal for food, you respect it and don't kill for 'pleasure'. My son is the same. My daughter and I are much more squeamish and couldn't kill chickens etc. But we do eat them. Slightly hypocritical I know, but it makes me wonder if, for example, if we were at war, how we'd change. I think we have it easy in this country. Meat comes from the shop, cleaned and sanitised. Makes me wonder how many people would eat meat if they had to rear it and kill it themselves. I've enjoyed your posts so far by the way. Welcome to the vine

[kimble]

Hello everyone, Nice to meet you all.

Still cockerels untouched, hens in the refrigerator un-butchered, sigh. The day before yesterday I had been trying to get 10 tone of crushed rock delivered for a restaurant parking strip where people were putting their wheels onto the grass and it needed graveling as the weeks of wet turned it into mud, and some pot holes had formed in another part - and yesterday I got a call from my dirt man saying he would be there in 10 minutes - he had never even checked back after my message - so I had to dash as 10 tons was on its way during breakfast and the place would have customers - and I had to move it with a wheelbarrow and shovel - so chickens left alone, then a job this morning and tomorrow - so paroled till Saturday. $400/10 tons delivered - not bad, top quality rock.

I am making pogie bread with some buck wheat flour I was given. I freeze pogies in 1+ kg bags, 2 - 3 pounds, so a batch is a bag of pogies, 1+ pounds of flour/corn meal, and anything else, like I often throw in a bit of grains or cracked corn. Baked 2 hours. I feed my chickens mostly non-gm grains, and they forage heavily in the forest, so they need a protein supplement for egg laying - and fish is the perfect food, chemical pure and organic. I am a fisherman and shellfish fisherman so it is easy - they get shrimp heads in season, and sometimes I microwave them some whole mullet and let them have that - they love those!



I am getting a dozen eggs a day now, more in summer, big, small, cream, peach/brown, green and sell them mostly - it is a hobby, but makes about $500 a year, and on my low income that is not nothing. A self supporting hobby. And I was at my library today and bought a big, older, book of old pictures (for fifty cents!) of the people of the Louisiana swamps and Marshes. It had 10 - 20 pictures worth framing I think - this being where I now live people like these old pictures.

I come from intellectual parents and my mother always thought 'book breaking' was a pretty bad thing - she understood it, but breaking books (to take apart old books with engravings and old prints to frame and sell, destroying the book - it is good money in places like London with the old book stores and boot sales) is just a fact of life. Most are just destined to molder away if left whole - still I have guilt at the thought - but oh, well, I have lots of guilt about stuff anyway.

So I am thinking of setting up a framing shop in a place I have, being a carpenter I have professional tools like table and band saws and such, and set my wife up framing them up. We already hang out at the farmers market occasionally if we have leftover eggs - and selling stuff like this (crafts) is allowed.

What do you think? making frames and breaking books? Selling them at the market, which is free. I will think about it. I have an old, huge, book of birds, not Audubon, but a hundred big colour plates. Sad to wreck it, but at least if we do it they may be appreciated more than sitting on a shelf and never opened. I would not cut it till we found it all was working. Just an idea I got today from that big book of Louisiana folk.

[kimble]

ancee, you said "He also has the theory that if you kill an animal for food, you respect it and don't kill for 'pleasure'. "

Now that is a slippery slope - ethics is one of my main interests, especially military ethics, and if such a thing is possible, nature ethics. Life/death and existence are really troublesome areas to think about - but what could be more entertaining?

The kill for pleasure, that is a bit of an eel to grasp. I suppose I have killed a mountain of things for pleasure in a sort of Guardian way. I was a hunter all my life, getting my first gun at 9. Then I have 'sport fished' all my life. My views on such are therefore maybe more nuanced, or biased, if you wish.

At the easy end you may say a casual burger is killing for pleasure, as it is virtually, tautologically even, if you phrased the burger eating rightly, and you cannot get more logical than that. I did not need the rabbits I would shoot and eat - it all is very tricky.

Maybe what you mean is - to not cause suffering in another for pleasure. Now I have shot lots of deer, and they do suffer from it, although I try to make it as painless as possible - but then I dislike the bit of them suffering - do Not enjoy that bit; but as a hunter there must have been some pleasure in the act of hunting successfully or I would never have done it - the meat is, as you say, available to buy.........so what does that mean?

Great wheel, Vishnu the protector, Kali the destroyer, and Juggernaut crushing all life under its great wheels for new to rise once it passes. It is all weird when you think about it. But this life stuff is why I garden, we have this innate love of growing, then harvesting, plowing, and then growing again. I keep animals, I love them -

But this driveling on is bad form, off topic - so chickens:



My bad chickens - they are out of the woods to graze on the road side grasses in a warm day - but you see in the right foreground? That is my drive and it is lined with big pots with citrus trees, in season - tomatoes and peppers, and all year, flowers. The chickens know they are allowed to graze on the roadside, but going near my house, and the pots, is forbidden. But they cannot help themselves - so the dogs are trained to attack if they get too close - which is a hilarious spectacle. The dogs go at them barking and snarling, the chickens flee with shrieks, to the woods - but is all is an act on both parts. the dogs like the chickens, and the chickens really have no fear of the dogs - but they run when chased. I have a command "Bad Chickens" I can say and the dogs will 'attack' the chickens, but no one is harmed, or bothered - just getting the birds run out of places where they should not be. (they eat a lot of garden stuff over the year - chickens are trouble).

[janzbro]

what type of hawks are getting your birds? we dont really have much in the UK that could take a full grown chicken.

Where in the USA are you?

[vixylix]

I love that the chickens wander free I think its a great idea to make and frame your pictures!

[jackarmy]

Whilst i really admire that, how do you choose the ones that get it ?, is it personal? or simply a case of

"Any cockll do"

[Scarlet]

The one that flys at your face gets the first chop, the next one is the one that goes for your ankles and on it goes ...the one that gets to stay is usually the gentle one that is also true to his breed.

[ancee]

ancee, you said "He also has the theory that if you kill an animal for food, you respect it and don't kill for 'pleasure'. "

Now that is a slippery slope - ethics is one of my main interests, especially military ethics, and if such a thing is possible, nature ethics. Life/death and existence are really troublesome areas to think about - but what could be more entertaining?

The kill for pleasure, that is a bit of an eel to grasp. I suppose I have killed a mountain of things for pleasure in a sort of Guardian way. I was a hunter all my life, getting my first gun at 9. Then I have 'sport fished' all my life. My views on such are therefore maybe more nuanced, or biased, if you wish.

At the easy end you may say a casual burger is killing for pleasure, as it is virtually, tautologically even, if you phrased the burger eating rightly, and you cannot get more logical than that. I did not need the rabbits I would shoot and eat - it all is very tricky.

Maybe what you mean is - to not cause suffering in another for pleasure. Now I have shot lots of deer, and they do suffer from it, although I try to make it as painless as possible - but then I dislike the bit of them suffering - do Not enjoy that bit; but as a hunter there must have been some pleasure in the act of hunting successfully or I would never have done it - the meat is, as you say, available to buy.........so what does that mean?

Great wheel, Vishnu the protector, Kali the destroyer, and Juggernaut crushing all life under its great wheels for new to rise once it passes. It is all weird when you think about it. But this life stuff is why I garden, we have this innate love of growing, then harvesting, plowing, and then growing again. I keep animals, I love them -

But this driveling on is bad form, off topic - so chickens:



My bad chickens - they are out of the woods to graze on the road side grasses in a warm day - but you see in the right foreground? That is my drive and it is lined with big pots with citrus trees, in season - tomatoes and peppers, and all year, flowers. The chickens know they are allowed to graze on the roadside, but going near my house, and the pots, is forbidden. But they cannot help themselves - so the dogs are trained to attack if they get too close - which is a hilarious spectacle. The dogs go at them barking and snarling, the chickens flee with shrieks, to the woods - but is all is an act on both parts. the dogs like the chickens, and the chickens really have no fear of the dogs - but they run when chased. I have a command "Bad Chickens" I can say and the dogs will 'attack' the chickens, but no one is harmed, or bothered - just getting the birds run out of places where they should not be. (they eat a lot of garden stuff over the year - chickens are trouble).

I think what I meant was, hmm... It's hard to explain. At the moment where I am there a bunch of idiots going about on quad bikes, they corner a deer, chop it's head off ( not sure what they want it for) let their dogs rip the carcass to pieces, possibly still alive and leave it for unsuspecting dog walkers to find. A lot of land where the deer roamed free is being built on. Suddenly I'm seeing them when I take the dog for a walk, never seen them before these stupid houses were built. Then there's others who badger bait, go lamping to tear hares apart. Not for food. They think it's fun and I just don't get it. It's cruelty on a scale that I just can't imagine. There's no respect, it's not to cull it's not to eat, it's not even hunting. Hope I've explained what I mean!
As an aside, the bad chickens screaming and running away from the dogs and the dogs chasing them reminded me of kiss-chase at school!

[kimble]

Sounds like weird behavior ancee. If anyone did that here I would sort it out - but there is no stopping suffering as a universal condition. In USA hunters kill many, many, millions of deer per year, 'sport hunting'. The top end predators are gone, and we are the stewards to stop the cycle of habitat destruction fallowed by starvation and diseases from malnutrition and proximity that are the control on animal populations which have no other. Like the rabbits of Australia.

Jackarmy, I hatch out my chickens from any egg laid, so never know what chicken I will get - but pretty well expect half males. Typically I kill the two year old roosters as they get too noisy, and have already bread into the flock so they need to be replaced to keep genetic variation. Also any unwanted new cockerels.

Old roosters are very hostile to the new males growing, so it is all fighting - I find you can keep two with one dominant, but more and it is too loud with them all calling their turf crowing, and too much fighting.

I have no luck letting the hens sit eggs - too many problems in an open hen house, so I use an incubator and let a broody hen sit a couple marked eggs and when the chicks hatch stick them under her - she never minds, or refuses them. I really like this incubator, used it for years and loaned it out lots - it cost $29 and was 'still air' which does not work as the temperatures are too uneven inside. I put in a fan from a broken computer and took some old wire and bent up this egg roller - the handle goes through the side and one pushes it, or pulls it, to turn the eggs all at once, without opening it and disrupting the temperature. It works great.



It is cold outside. 5C mid-day, and freezing last night, and freezing tonight. I thought we were going to get a mere couple light frosts this warm winter, but fortunately here is some cold to kill some bugs. I mostly grow organically and the pests make it very hard - and with no good freeze they run amok in the spring.

But my great big pepper plants will all be killed - I had 5 big ones, peppers will last years if the cold does not kill them. But I did not try to cover them, I doubted it would work, and new ones will be fine, I have plenty of seed.

Lets see.. I have 4 calamondun trees, just bought last year at $5 each after the season fpr planting was over, 2 kumquats, 2 lemons, 1 kaffier lime, 2 navel oranges, 2 tangerines, 3 satsumas, 2 grapefruits, I cannot turn down ones discounted to a few dollars, All either bigger like a couple are - and so hardy for a freeze like the one we had, or young so all covered up in plastic bags. Two loquat trees covered, but they should not need it, some other stuff - and my banana grove has had to fend for its self as the winds were so high wrapping them in the dark would have been too much. Bananas are bi-annual so you have to get them through the winter to get fruit, which is not easy because we do get one to two hard freezes. The bananas from my plants - a local one from a garden near, one that has been kept here for hundreds of years probably - has great big, delicious fruit with pinkish meat. I will wrap a couple today, last nights freeze was just a couple degrees F below freezing and they should have made it. The plants send up fresh plants from the roots either way - the roots are not killed.

I have 2 guavas, they are too North here, we are at the edge of where citrus can get by with care, but I cut them back to two foot tall earlier so they would not be shocked, wrapped them in blankets, and put trash cans over them. I want guavas for my first time.

The chickens will be fine, they get a huge serving of pogie bread and let out to lounge in the sun.

[kimble]

Bananas - here is my brain damaged Lab, a loving dog, but with some issues. She is sleeping by me now, and is always with me, these are last years bananas, we harvest them in November, and sweet potatoes, I just dug this years sweet potatoes last week



Covering plants in one of my side gardens - being on the fringe of climate zones you always have to be ready for doing this. I have lived in cold climates- and am from London, and am OK with winters, but love hot weather.

[kimble]

So day three or four or whatever and I have put the birds to bed and the cockerels still going fine, still alive, and I thought of 'Alice in Chains' 'Here they come to snuff the rooster'. An interesting thing - a song about the man's father's time in Vietnam - don't mean to trivialize it though- old thoughts. Not a very happy band - all the metal bands have this darkness I do not care for, but existential angst is an understandable human condition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRA3pyb1WvI

And tomorrow will be chicken wings, bought ones, as it is the American Football pre Superbowl games. I do not fallow sports, but watch these final games with the traditional 'Buffalo Hot Wings' as the game main food just because it is a huge national event. I have been living in USA so many years now I do not even know if hot wings ever became popular in UK, or Europe. Here they are almost mandatory to serve during the big games of the year. I have mine bought already. They are served with celery sticks and blue cheese sauce - really good (picture from net)




My own roosters look like they will make it into next week........ Just an update on cooking the chicken.

[vixylix]

ooh I love buffalo wings - not really caught on in the UK at all unfortunately!

[kimble]

I have the Alice in Chains song on now from the link I posted, love the women's choral beginning, I also like the lyrics, 'bullets streaming at me from somewhere -- eyes stinging with sweat -- every path leads to nowhere -- here they come to snuff the rooster -- got my pills -- my body breathing its dying breath -- The whole song is of protesting and resisting death set in the Vietnam and then when he finally is finished later from pancreatic cancer - from the agent orange and explosives accelerants; same as my brother went; a lifer special opps solider.

- at the book sale I mentioned I got a bunch of books Saturday - the only one possible for breaking is one on illuminated book paintings, gorgeous full page pictures but not very likely for farmers market sales - will keep thinking on it. I did get 3 books on special opps soldiers and front line infantry in the recent wars, 2 on Churchill, 2 on Britain during the Viking era

(I am in the middle of one of those now, bit dry and scholarly - but one fantastic insight, the two amazing technologies that allowed the tiny numbers of Norsemen to change the world were: Ship building, and upland sheep husbandry! Iceland, Norway, Orkney, Sweden, Shetland, Faroes, the sheep and tough cattle allowed them to live back there completely out of reach of any retaliation like they came plundering from another planet. We do not often think of sheep being a remarkable technology, but there you are.)

Also a book on Bodicia, another one is memories of a Geisha, one on 'The Empty Quarter, Arabia' an Erica Jung for sentimental reasons, the collected letters of Pepys (historic British) then 'Pagan to Byzantium', history of Western peoples on the Med, one on The Northwest Passage and all those adventures, and more, a big box of eclectic but good books for $11. Good thing I had installed 120 lineal foot of book shelves recently.

Chickens here all still carrying on, the two big roosters shrieking all day as they do - the two noisiest cockerels I have ever had, the two jr roosters that will survive to keep the flock, beginning their attempts at crowing. I am having a break inside but have the rest of the day budgeted and no rooster doing in planned. I have a very auditory bunch of animals. The 4 dogs all do an amazing group howl whenever they get left at home - which is rare as they go everywhere with us normally. Like wolves but tamer, the base howl from the lab to the sopranos from the Chihuahuas. Then my stupid chickens talk and shout all day - good thing my closest neighbors live 600 foot away through the woods.

So, stay on topic - the chicken wings were great. (Game was good), and I am going to defrost another batch of pogies for the birds. Here are the dogs, the brown one in the back - they love the truck and would spend all day in it if they could.

[kimble]

Cooking for the chickens and all that..I found a bag of sweet potatoes I dug earlier that had been left outside in a plastic bag and have bad parts - so am boiling those up for the birds as I post. The dog Jack - in a sort of Marine chicken thing is out barking at the diving pelicans off the back of the house. He really distrusts pelicans, they do make a great big splash, and are pretty huge, so he charges off to the shell point and runs them off.

This is an old picture off my porch, they make quite a racket when hitting