Back in June, at the end of Zac's last school year, his math teacher, Theresa, had a bonfire for the whole school at her house. We fell to talking and it turned out that she was raising eight pigs over the summer. We had been meaning to buy a pig "on the hoof" this year, as we had last year.
Actually, last year we bought a quarter of a pig from a local high-school student whose parents raise beef. We don't really know why she was doing pigs, but heard from our friends Will and Judy (the organic farmers) that she had pigs to sell. Last year we split a pig four ways. That turns out not to have been enough pig! We got sausage, which was marvelous; a lightly-smoked ham that we didn't really know how to cook - it was good, but we didn't cook it well; some ribs that Jordan mistreated on the grill; and a whole lot of chops and loin that were to die for. Before we knew it, it was gone!
So this year we decided to go for a half a pig, which was Theresa's unit of measure. Margy's cousin immediately spoke for the other half, but by that time we had talked the thing up enough that several other people were interested. No problem -- there were seven pigs left to go. So we bought another pig and divided it four ways - among four friends of ours.
Well, today was pig pick-up day, as well as being Halloween. While the kids were out trick-or-treating with their friends (amazing what happens when they get older and one of them can drive!), we drove up to Theresa's to get the pigs. She had taken them over to the local slaughterhouse (a mom-and-pop operation which is where Margy and her cousin picked up our pig last year), and they had delivered (or she had picked up, I'm not sure which) the pig back to her house.
As we drove up to Theresa's house, I could see about eight piles of stuff vaguely silhouetted in the yard - yup, eight piles of half-pig. Everything was vacuum-wrapped in plastic and some cuts were labeled. Of course our daughter had the van and we had the sedan, but everything fit just fine, in two coolers, two boxes, and a plastic garbage bag -- we took five of the eight piles because some friends who had made a separate deal for a half-pig with Theresa were out of town today. We chatted for quite a while about pigs and chickens and their cattle -- they have four Belted Galloway cows and are planning on four more.
So we dropped half- and quarter-pigs off at three friends' houses. By now, all the pigs are safe in freezers, except for the quarter that we're taking to Massachusetts on Saturday for ultimate delivery to the friends with whom Margy stays when she's there working.
In case you're wondering, a half a pig is about 17 pounds of sausage, four packages of chops, four packages of steaks, two pork loins, and either a butt or a rack of ribs. Average for a half a pig: 50 pounds. Still to come are the bacon and the hams, which are still being smoked.
Why, you may ask, are we doing this? If you haven't read about the miserable conditions on hog farms, you really should. Then you can read about the miserable conditions in the slaughterhouses and the incredible pollution the entire commercial pork venture causes. Michael Pollen's book The Omnivore's Dilemma talks a lot about what's wrong with industrial agriculture (though not about pigs specifically). Jordan first learned about how bad pig farming can be from Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them which, in the middle of all of its political exposé, digressed a little on to the evils of hog farming. A number of other New Yorker articles and the like have driven the point home. Jordan tries very hard not to buy commercial pork, with some occasional lapses when the local stuff isn't around. Buying from our friends seems like a good way to support sustainable agriculture, people with decent life-styles, and get great food, all at the same time. What could be better?
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Boston Gets in the Mood
Sometimes a hen gets broody, which means that she gets the urge to sit on eggs night and day. Here's how it all works: Hens lay about an egg a day during the part of the year when the days are longer than 15 hours. After they've laid a clutch of eggs in a nest (maybe 8 or 10), they stop laying and sit on the eggs 24/7. They get off the nest a few times a day to get a bite to eat, but basically they sit there all day long, with their feathers puffed up to cover all the eggs, looking like a toad in a trance.
When we had chickens before, our hens never got broody. They couldn't care less that we took their eggs away every day, and they never seemed to stay in a nest longer than it took to lay an egg -- 20 minutes, maybe. But Jordan noticed that Boston, the smaller of our two feather-foots, was in the nest every time we went into the hen house, and she'd started sleeping there instead of on the perches with everyone else. Kabob the rooster insists that all his hens sleep on the highest perch, which is about six feet off the ground, but he made an exception in her case.
We tried to "break her up," the technical term for talking a hen out of sitting on a nest. What a joke! We threw her off the nest. We took her outside. We walked around with her. We even took her into the house to hang out with us. No luck -- as soon as we put her back in the hen house, she was back on a nest.
"It's August," said Margy, "and too late for hatching chicks! They'll still be little when it gets cold, and they'll freeze." But soft-hearted Jordan hated to see Boston wasting her time, so on about the third day of Boston's vigil we stuck the day's eggs under her.
When we had chickens before, our hens never got broody. They couldn't care less that we took their eggs away every day, and they never seemed to stay in a nest longer than it took to lay an egg -- 20 minutes, maybe. But Jordan noticed that Boston, the smaller of our two feather-foots, was in the nest every time we went into the hen house, and she'd started sleeping there instead of on the perches with everyone else. Kabob the rooster insists that all his hens sleep on the highest perch, which is about six feet off the ground, but he made an exception in her case.
We tried to "break her up," the technical term for talking a hen out of sitting on a nest. What a joke! We threw her off the nest. We took her outside. We walked around with her. We even took her into the house to hang out with us. No luck -- as soon as we put her back in the hen house, she was back on a nest.
"It's August," said Margy, "and too late for hatching chicks! They'll still be little when it gets cold, and they'll freeze." But soft-hearted Jordan hated to see Boston wasting her time, so on about the third day of Boston's vigil we stuck the day's eggs under her.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Moving the Chickens Outside
Time passed, the chicks grew, and we had to expand to a second cardboard box. Finally, we removed everything movable from the utility room and built a chicken-wire wall, complete with door, and turned half the room over to the them. We lined the walls and floor with a blue tarp, and put branches collected from outside through the wire and across the room to make perches.
Finally, we cleared out the back half of the pool house, a fairly spacious outbuilding, made another chicken-wire wall, and moved the chickens out to their new home. The final building project was fencing in a chicken run along the back of our fenced-in swimming pool.
Happy chickens! At about five months (that is, early July), we found the first egg, about half the size of a regular grocery store egg. (Chickens start small and work up.) We put up a row of nest boxes (left over from our previous chicken set-up), and put a golf ball in each one. Chickens can't tell an egg from a golf ball, so when they see a golf ball in a nest, they figure that this must be where eggs go, and they lay there. By early August, we were getting 8-10 eggs a day, and pestering out friends to take them. Once they got to a more normal size, we signed up as an egg vendor with the local food co-op, and starting selling them a couple dozen eggs every week or so. But it's more fun to give them away.
Finally, we cleared out the back half of the pool house, a fairly spacious outbuilding, made another chicken-wire wall, and moved the chickens out to their new home. The final building project was fencing in a chicken run along the back of our fenced-in swimming pool.
Happy chickens! At about five months (that is, early July), we found the first egg, about half the size of a regular grocery store egg. (Chickens start small and work up.) We put up a row of nest boxes (left over from our previous chicken set-up), and put a golf ball in each one. Chickens can't tell an egg from a golf ball, so when they see a golf ball in a nest, they figure that this must be where eggs go, and they lay there. By early August, we were getting 8-10 eggs a day, and pestering out friends to take them. Once they got to a more normal size, we signed up as an egg vendor with the local food co-op, and starting selling them a couple dozen eggs every week or so. But it's more fun to give them away.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
A Rooster for a Rooster
Back in February when we ordered our chicks, we ordered pullets -- that is, females. You don't need a rooster for hens to lay eggs (do women ovulate without men around? of course!), so most people want as few roosters around as possible. Actually, we enjoy having a rooster, so we told our friend Emma that if any of the chickens turned out to be a roster, we'd take him.
The hatchery promises 96% accuracy, not 100%, and indeed, one of Emma's Araucana chickens started growing long tail feathers and crowing at daybreak, so we arranged a swap. We'd ended up with three black-and-white hens with feathers on their feet -- we're still not sure what breed these are, and Jordan and Meg think they look stupid with those foot feathers. One of them had been the runt of the litter, and and she was still a bit smaller than the rest. Emma had only one of these, so we swapped the largest feather-foot (Kiev) for Senor, their rooster.
Senor did crow up a storm, and not only at daybreak. The first night he must have woken up a lot, due to unfamiliar surroundings, and we were beginning to regret the swap, but he settled down on subsequent nights. We really enjoy having a rooster to boss our hens around. Our friend Charles decided that the name Senor didn't fit with the rest of our chicken names, so he dubbed him Kabob.
A few weeks later, Emma's dad Doug called us to report that we'd given them a rooster. Not that he was complaining, you understand, but there was a resigned, tired note to his voice. I thought Doug had gone completely around the bend, or maybe, being an English professor, he was a bit confused about poultry. Okay, our chicken might be bigger than their chickens, but she didn't have any of the characteristics of a rooster. However, the next time I dropped by their house, our former chicken crowed, so it looks like however weird the coincidence, we swapped a rooster for their rooster! We offered to swap back, but I think both families are fine with who they've got.
The hatchery promises 96% accuracy, not 100%, and indeed, one of Emma's Araucana chickens started growing long tail feathers and crowing at daybreak, so we arranged a swap. We'd ended up with three black-and-white hens with feathers on their feet -- we're still not sure what breed these are, and Jordan and Meg think they look stupid with those foot feathers. One of them had been the runt of the litter, and and she was still a bit smaller than the rest. Emma had only one of these, so we swapped the largest feather-foot (Kiev) for Senor, their rooster.
Senor did crow up a storm, and not only at daybreak. The first night he must have woken up a lot, due to unfamiliar surroundings, and we were beginning to regret the swap, but he settled down on subsequent nights. We really enjoy having a rooster to boss our hens around. Our friend Charles decided that the name Senor didn't fit with the rest of our chicken names, so he dubbed him Kabob.
A few weeks later, Emma's dad Doug called us to report that we'd given them a rooster. Not that he was complaining, you understand, but there was a resigned, tired note to his voice. I thought Doug had gone completely around the bend, or maybe, being an English professor, he was a bit confused about poultry. Okay, our chicken might be bigger than their chickens, but she didn't have any of the characteristics of a rooster. However, the next time I dropped by their house, our former chicken crowed, so it looks like however weird the coincidence, we swapped a rooster for their rooster! We offered to swap back, but I think both families are fine with who they've got.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Naming the Chickens
The chickens have completely feathered in. Chicks start growing feathers within days of hatching, starting with wing feathers, then a little chevron at the shoulder blades, and continuing until all their fluff is covered with feathers. Within two months, they looked just like chickens, but smaller.
"Don't name the chickens!" we told Meg. "They'll end up as food!" Her friend Nora suggested that she name them after food, and so she did.
The yellow chickens (Buff Orpingtons) are Nugget, Fingers, and Patty. The black chickens (Black Giants) are Stroganoff and Cacciatore. The New Hampshire Red chicken, who is brown with white spots, is named Alfredo. The brown-and-gold Araucana with the puffs of feathers by her ears, which look like mutton-chop whiskers, is Fajita. The Silver-Laced Wyandottes, with white feathers with black edges, are General Tso and Col. Sanders, while the black-and-white feather-foots (Cochins of some breed we haven't identified) are Kiev, Boston (the runt), and Stew.
"Don't name the chickens!" we told Meg. "They'll end up as food!" Her friend Nora suggested that she name them after food, and so she did.
The yellow chickens (Buff Orpingtons) are Nugget, Fingers, and Patty. The black chickens (Black Giants) are Stroganoff and Cacciatore. The New Hampshire Red chicken, who is brown with white spots, is named Alfredo. The brown-and-gold Araucana with the puffs of feathers by her ears, which look like mutton-chop whiskers, is Fajita. The Silver-Laced Wyandottes, with white feathers with black edges, are General Tso and Col. Sanders, while the black-and-white feather-foots (Cochins of some breed we haven't identified) are Kiev, Boston (the runt), and Stew.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Everything Is Breaking
It's been a calamitous week here in Cornwall. Last week, while Jordan was still in Salzburg, our elderly van decided not to operate if you wanted to put in it gear. Idling in neutral was fine, but shifting to any gear other than "N" made the engine die. Margy had the van towed to two different service stations before a mechanic offered to try fixing it.
Meanwhile, our shower switched to all-cold, regardless of the setting. Actually, that happened just before we left for Spain. (Did we mention that the van had a flat tire the morning we left for Spain, we couldn't get the lug-nuts off, and Margy had to call the motoring club to put on the spare once we got back?)
The following week (this Wednesday), Margy was on the bus home from Boston when its transmission also failed -- clearly, she has bad transmission karma these days. The bus floated over to the shoulder, the cheery and competent driver called for a replacement bus, and we were on the road again after a half an hour. Amazing!
While Margy was in Boston, a piece in the dishwasher gave way ("never buy a Maytag dishwasher" is our advice), so we are doing the dishes by hand. The missing part is backordered forever, so we are researching food-safe adhesives so we can try gluing the piece back together.
The next day (yesterday), Margy missed a step walking out of the pool house (which has only three steps altogether), fell (gracefully), and broke a teeny-tiny bone in her foot (the right fifth metatarsal, if you must know, and it's a comminuted fracture). She off her foot entirely for a couple of weeks, as far as we know, so she's relearning how to use crutches. The good news is, since she can't drive, there's no hurry getting the van fixed!
We're just whining, we know. Just ignore us!
Meanwhile, our shower switched to all-cold, regardless of the setting. Actually, that happened just before we left for Spain. (Did we mention that the van had a flat tire the morning we left for Spain, we couldn't get the lug-nuts off, and Margy had to call the motoring club to put on the spare once we got back?)
The following week (this Wednesday), Margy was on the bus home from Boston when its transmission also failed -- clearly, she has bad transmission karma these days. The bus floated over to the shoulder, the cheery and competent driver called for a replacement bus, and we were on the road again after a half an hour. Amazing!
While Margy was in Boston, a piece in the dishwasher gave way ("never buy a Maytag dishwasher" is our advice), so we are doing the dishes by hand. The missing part is backordered forever, so we are researching food-safe adhesives so we can try gluing the piece back together.
The next day (yesterday), Margy missed a step walking out of the pool house (which has only three steps altogether), fell (gracefully), and broke a teeny-tiny bone in her foot (the right fifth metatarsal, if you must know, and it's a comminuted fracture). She off her foot entirely for a couple of weeks, as far as we know, so she's relearning how to use crutches. The good news is, since she can't drive, there's no hurry getting the van fixed!
We're just whining, we know. Just ignore us!
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Leaving Spain
It's all over. Jordan headed to Salzburg for almost two weeks, and the rest of us went home. The immigration people took us aside to check our passports, but other than the that, we had no trouble.
What a wonderful trip! When we got home, people tended to focus in on the theft of our passports and computer. That was certainly a huge drag, but it was an eye-opener for us that even a disaster like this is just "stuff" -- and we can replace stuff. (We are lucky enough to have insurance!) No one was hurt, and the main thing we are sorry to have lost is the pictures of our visit to Trevélez and the Alhambra. Our memories are especially valuable, since we know we have to keep them fresh without photos to fall back on.
We are planning a follow-up trip in two years, this time to Córdoba (to see the mosque that we missed), Nerja (the lovely town on the Costa del Sol where we reported the theft and hung around while Jordan called the credit card companies, bank, etc.), Lisbon, and the Portuguese coast. Time to start planning!
What a wonderful trip! When we got home, people tended to focus in on the theft of our passports and computer. That was certainly a huge drag, but it was an eye-opener for us that even a disaster like this is just "stuff" -- and we can replace stuff. (We are lucky enough to have insurance!) No one was hurt, and the main thing we are sorry to have lost is the pictures of our visit to Trevélez and the Alhambra. Our memories are especially valuable, since we know we have to keep them fresh without photos to fall back on.
We are planning a follow-up trip in two years, this time to Córdoba (to see the mosque that we missed), Nerja (the lovely town on the Costa del Sol where we reported the theft and hung around while Jordan called the credit card companies, bank, etc.), Lisbon, and the Portuguese coast. Time to start planning!
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