One Bad Day....

I don't know who said that about raising animals for food, (I'm sure I could google and find it, but.........)  Anywho, I believe it to be true here at our little homestead.  

Our animals are raised with love and affection and plenty of food and water.  We take the steward-ship of our critters seriously and do our best to give them the best lives possible, until that one bad day.

Saturday was the one bad day for the rabbits, as well as four of our laying hens and the latest batch of quail.

I'll spare you any details about said bad day, because there are lots and lots of ways to get a rabbit (or a chicken or a quail) ready for the table.  

As The Man is fond of saying.....

"There's more than one way to skin a cat, but if it's still got hair on it at the end, it ain't skint!" 

And yes, that is a direct quote.  It means there are a lot of ways to do something, and as long as it's right at the end, then it's the right way.  If it isn't right at the end, then it's the wrong way!

Ahem....so I'm putting this picture in so that a rabbit carcass isn't what you see staring at you in your blog feed....

If you don't want to see a nekkid rabbit, please stop reading right now because the picture is below....

I'll add another gratuitous cute bunny shot so you've got time to look away...

Ok, one more and then the nekkid rabbit will show up....

So we processed all 7 of Eden's kits.  

This is how they dressed out...

The buck weights were as follows..

Live weight - Dressed weight

4.36 - 2.09

4.98 - 2.44

5.09 - 2.48

The doe weights were...

4.83 - 2.44

5.05 - 2.47

4.17 - 2.15

4.15 - 2.09

I'm not exactly sure how to calculate dressed percentage, but I think it's around 50% which I consider to be not bad!  That is also the weight of the rabbit only, I didn't weigh the liver, which we did keep from each rabbit.  I didn't keep the heart or kidneys.  We are happy with the results and are excited to see what the different crosses produce.

We had rabbit for supper on Sunday night and it was delicious!  I took pictures for you, I promise I did, but when I went to download them from my camera, they weren't there so....

Until next time....

God Bless,

The Quail Report - More Quail in the Freezer!

Our little Italian Speckled Coturnix Quail hatched.....

And then they grew..

And grew......

And then 5 weeks and 5 days after hatching, we found this.....the egg on the left is a regular quail egg, and the one on the right is a pullet quail egg...

And then, we had this...

In 6 short weeks!

And now we've got these again...

And the cycle continues!  

I must tell you again, the quail have been a FANTASTIC addition to our little homestead.  

Until next time....

God Bless,

Chickens in the Freezer!

Saturday morning we were up at at 'em to get the chickens in the freezer.  We went out and built a nice hot fire in the yard with cedar, then set a galvanized tank full of water on some cinder blocks over the fire.  

Then The Husband went to collect the first 4 victims and we were in business.  Sometimes we skin the birds and sometimes we pluck. If you skin, you don't need the tank of hot water, but this time we were chicken pluckers!

I have spared you pictures of this part of the day, but after we got them all killed, plucked and gutted, we brought them in the house to finish cleaning up.

  The way that works is, I put a whole bird down in the nice clean kitchen sink, and wash the heck out of it with cold water.  

 This is when I remove any lingering "leavings" in the body cavity, and pull off any stray pin feathers.  Once the bird is nice and clean, it goes into a tote of ice water on the back porch.  

Where they stayed to chill for a couple hours, while we delivered two ricks of firewood...

After they have chilled in the ice water for several hours, or even overnight, they are ready to finish.  At this point it's all up to you.  You can package them up as whole birds, or cut them into parts.  Since it's only the 3 of us, and we aren't really big eaters, we cut them into parts.  3 legs in a package, etc.  

We skin and bone the breasts for boneless breast meat...

And we put one half a breast per package....

then we cut the thighs in half to make "fake wings".  We really love hot wings, so this way we have twice as many wings.  Then we've still got the other half of the thigh, without a bone to use however we'd like.  Sorry, I didn't take pictures of that!

We left one whole bird for us, and one whole bird to take to our beautiful neighbors...

And by Saturday night my little 50$ c/l freezer looked like this.....

God is good, and as our visiting preacher said last night, we must "count it all Joy"!  To God be all the glory!!

Till next time....

Filling Up the Freezer!

 Sunday morning the phone rang at about 10:20 and it was a guy we work with, telling us he'd shot us a deer!  He said he was about 10 minutes from our house and he'd drop it by.  We usually leave for church around 10:50 so we knew it was going to be a scramble, but he dropped off a nice big doe and we got her hung up in the shed, changed out of our bloody clothes and off to church we went!

When we got home from church, we had to run to town to get freezer paper.  We are butchering our meat birds next weekend, so we knew we'd need a bunch of it anyway.

We packed her body cavity in ice, then made a batch of butter pecan, goat milk ice cream while we waited for her to chill out some.  

We started working on her at 5 pm and finished up at 8 pm.  Not bad for a day's work!  And the best part is, since The Man was a butcher for 10 years, my freezer is full of venison bottom rounds, top rounds, tip steaks, eye of round steaks and all sorts of other fancy cuts!

This is the back legs, or hams.....

While the man hacked the parts off, I worked on grinding the burger with this handy, dandy hand grinder.......

While The Youngun was in charge of wrapping, taping, and labeling!

And 3 hours later, this was all that was left.  These bones are currently residing in the freezer so that I can cook them down for stock.  I'll probably make soup with the meat that cooks off the bones, or possibly barbecue...the possibilities are endless!

It doesn't look like much but that's quite a bit of meat residing in our little craigslist $50 freezer!  We had to buy another one because the three hogs are living in our big freezer.  This little freezer will house this deer and our meat birds that are meeting their doom next weekend.

God is so good, always providing in every way!!

Til next time, I remain yours in Christ,

Good Gracious!

It's been a long while since I've posted! I get caught up in my other blog Thickin and Thinnin and don't update here as much as I should!

Things are good here on the ole homestead. We just returned from a 10 day vacation to Navarre Beach Florida which was a nice relaxing time. I missed my critters, but it was nice to relax on the beach just the same. My wonderful friend Darling Deb took care of things for me here, and she did a fan-tab-u-lous job! I wasn't worried a bit and she claims that she had fun doing it. We are looking into therapy for her, don't worry ;)

The weekend before we left we butchered our meat birds. The Man and I did them together, 12 on Saturday and 14 on Sunday. I must tell you that we skinned them rather than plucked them and things went much faster. Since I'm on Weight Watchers, I don't eat the skin anyway and he doesn't care as long as I double dip his in milk/egg and flour before I fry them so he has lots of good crunchies to eat! These birds were nice! Great big ole breasts and legs! When we butcher chickens we package them up in parts. We package legs together, thighs together. We also bone the breasts because I eat alot of boneless chicken breast. The breasts on these birds were so big that I put one HALF of a breast in a package for the three of us to eat. That means out of 26 birds, I got 52 packages of boneless breast! That is awesome I do have to say!

The goats are doing well and hopefully all three of the girls are bred. My fingers are crossed for that because Naomi got bred back in July and didn't show heat again. I thought she was bred and was looking forward to December kids. Then the silly goat came into season in October!! So hopefully she is bred this time. I'm almost positive that Star is bred. She shows heat very very strongly and she hasn't come in since she was bred in late September. We plan to butcher Icing Ears within the next couple months. I'm very excited for this as I've never eaten Chevon before, but it is a very lean, healthy protein source.

Moon's litter of bunnies will be ready to butcher in a couple weeks as well. I plan to can some of this rabbit meat for quick meals such as BBQ rabbit. Mmmmmm, BBQ rabbit.......

I'm almost done quilting the baby quilt that I will be gifting to a friend who is expecting a little girl. It has really come out nicely and I'll post pictures as soon as it is complete.

Thanksgiving was wonderful. My family came here and I got to cook all day (which is what I love!) and we had a nice holiday. I enjoy Thanksgiving and it's my wish that everyone will remember to be thankful EVERY day of their lives. God is good to us, and we have only to think about our blessings rather than dwelling on the negatives!

Till next time.............GOD BLESS FROM GOODWIFE FARM!