Food Glorious Food

I have not  written my blog for a few weeks because i have been very busy cooking. At the beginning of March we held a pop-up cafe chez nous and then last weekend i celebrated a big birthday with a party for 65 guests.

Pop-up  Cafe
Here is the menu for my first pop-up cafe;

Eight people (4 couples) joined us for Sunday lunch, here are the recipes;

Celery & Potato Soup (serves 4-6)

2 oz butter

1 lb potatoes, peeled and chopped

2 onions, peeled and quartered

5 stalks celery, washed and sliced

1 1/2 pts chicken stock

Salt and pepper

1/4 pint of milk

nutmeg

1. Melt the butter and fry vegetables gently for 4 minutes.

2. Add stock and seasoning and bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 40 minutes.

3. Sieve or liquidize.

4. Add milk or some cream, reheat, adjust seasoning and grate in a little nutmeg.

Taken from 'Recipes from the Farmhouse Kitchen', Yorkshire Television, 1975

Mushroom Soup (serves 4-6)

50 grms unsalted butter

1 large onion, peeled and chopped

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

1 tbsp chopped thyme

800 grms mixed chestnut and button mushrooms (or any type of mushrooms available), cleaned and chopped

800 mls vegetable stock

200 ml creme fraiche 

sea salt and black pepper

1. Melt the butter in a non-stick pan, add the onion and garlic and fry until soft.

2. Add the thyme and the mushrooms and cook for another 6-10 mins.

3. Pour in the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 20-25 mins.

4. Liquidize, return to the pan and add the creme fraiche, gently reheat and season to taste.

Herby Rolls (Makes 12)

330 ml water

1.5 tbsps/20 ml Sunflower oil

1.5 tsps/9 grms salt

1 tbsp/14 grms sugar

2.5 tbsps/14 grms powdered milk

600grms strong white bread flour

1 sachet/4.5 grms powdered yeast

2-3 tbsps fresh herbs such as thyme, sage, chives, basil, oregano

1. Put all the ingredients in the order shown into your electric mixer bowl.

2. Using a dough hook mix the ingredients until they form an elastic dough, add a little more water if the ingredients do not stick together or add a little more flour if the dough is too dry.

3. Turn into a large bowl and cover with silver foil, cling film or a clean tea towel and leave somewhere warm to rise.

4. When the dough has doubled in size, pre-heat the oven to 200c, Gas Mark 6. Remove the dough from the bowl, knead it again and divide into twelve balls, place these on a greased tray or in an oven tin. Cook in the oven for 25-30 minutes.

Beef Stew & Dumplings (Serves 8)

This is a pressure cooker recipe and it is available here; 

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pressure-Cooker-Beef-Stew/Detail.aspx?

Mushroom Risotto (Serves 3-4)

900 ml/1 1/2 pts vegetable stock

175 grms/6 oz mixed mushrooms, sliced

Juice of 1/2 lemon

75 grms/3 oz butter

2 tbsps/30mls fresh chopped parsley

2 tbsps/30mls olive oil

1 small onion, finely chopped

275 grms/10 oz risotto rice

120ml/4 fl oz white wine

3 tbsps/45ml Parmesan cheese

salt and black pepper

Parsley to garnish

1. Toss the mushrooms with the lemon juice in a bowl.

2. Melt a third of the butter in a saucepan and fry the mushrooms, stir in the chopped parsley, cook for 30 seconds and then transfer to a bowl.

3. Heat the olive oil and half remaining butter in the saucepan and fry the onions until soft. 

4. Add the rice and stir constantly until the grains are evenly coated with oil.

5. Stir in all the mushrooms, add the wine, and cook over a medium heat until the liquid has been absorbed.

6. Add the stock a ladleful at a time, making sure each is absorbed before adding more, and stirring regularly to ensure the rice doesn't stick to the base of the saucepan.

7. When all the liquid has been absorbed, remove the pan from the heat, stir in the remaining butter and the Parmesan cheese and seasoning.

8. Cover the pan and allow to rest for 3-4 minutes before serving.

Based on a recipe taken from the book 'Rice and Risotto' by Christine Ingram, 1999.

Bakewell Trifle (Makes 8)

The recipe can be found here;

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/bakewell-trifles

Cherry Cookies (Makes 2 batches of 50)

This makes a lot of cookies, you can split the biscuit dough into two and freeze half of it or reduce the ingredients to half to get 1 batch of 40-50 biscuits.

300 grms/10 oz caster sugar

140 grms/5 oz butter

2 eggs

1 tbsp vanilla

2 tbsps milk

550 grms/1lb 4oz plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

200 grms/8 oz glace cherries, chopped

1. In a large bowl, beat the sugar and butter together until pale and creamy. 

2. Gradually beat in the eggs, vanilla and milk.

3. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together in a new bowl, then add a few spoonfuls at a time to the butter mixture, stirring with each addition.

4. Fold the cherries through the dough, then shape into 2 logs. Wrap in cling film, freeze one and chill the other for at least 2 hours.

5. Heat the oven to 180c (fan 160c), Gas 4 and grease 3 baking trays. Unwrap the cling film and use a large knife to slice rounds the thickness of £1 coins. Lay the cookies on the tray and bake for 5-10 mins.  

Recipe taken from BBC GoodFood magazine, December 2006, recipe by Jane Helm.

Birthday  Bash

As I had  to cater for so many and didn't want  to be cooking on my bithday I chose recipes that could be made in advance and frozen, here are the recipes;

Pork Madras

This is a combination of two recipes, the first is for the Madras Paste and the second for the Madras Curry, you can find the recipes here;

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1191650/madras-curry-paste

http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/31964/pork-madras.aspx

Lamb Tagine (Serves 8)

1.25kg/2lb 12oz stewing lamb, cut into big chunks

4 tbsps olive oil

2 onions, finely chopped

good pinch saffron strands

large knob or root ginger, peeled and grated

6 garlic cloves, chopped

4 tomatoes (fresh or canned), each cut into 6

2 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp coriander seeds

1 cinnamon stick

250grms ready-to-eat apricots

handful of chopped parsley, to serve

clear honey, to serve

1. Season the lamb well. Heat 2 tbsps olive oil in a large casserole dish, brown the meat all over, then remove and set aside.

2. Add another 2 tbsps oil to the pan, then fry the onions, saffron and ginger over a medium heat until the onions are soft and golden. Tip in the garlic, tomatoes and spices, then cook for another minute.

3. Tip in the browned lamb, then just cover with cold water (about 600ml). Put the lid on, bring to the boil slowly and simmer gently for 1 hour (or put into pressure cooker for 12 minutes on 15 bar pressure). 

4. Add the apricots, then simmer uncovered for another 30 mins until the meat is tender and the sauce has thickened slightly. 

5. Season to taste, the scatter over the parsley and finish with a little honey trickled on top.

Recipe taken from BBC GoodFood magazine, January 2007, recipe by Paul Merrett.

Chicken Gumbo (Serves 8)

This recipe needs to be started the day before you wish to eat it.

For the Rub;

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 tsp cayenne pepper (I used paprika instead)

1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

For the Tomato Sauce;

50 grms/2 oz butter

50 grms/2 oz plain flour

1.2 litres/ 2 pints chicken stock

400 grm can chopped tomatoes

For the Gumbo;

4 skinless chicken breasts

8 skinless chicken drumsticks

8 skinless chicken thighs

(I used only chicken breasts and cut them into chunks)

50 grms/2 oz plain flour, for dusting

3 tbsps sunflower oil, for frying

2 eggs (I put these in my first version but didn't like it so left them out of the second version)

25 grms/1 oz butter

1 onion, finely chopped

1 green pepper, deseeded and sliced

4 celery sticks, sliced

200 grms chorizo, thickly sliced

50 grms/2 oz cooked ham, chopped

small handful flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped

1. The day before, mix the rub ingredients together, then rub three quarters of it over the chicken pieces. Leave for up to 24 hours, covered in the fridge. Save the rest of the mix to finish the dish.

2. Next day, make the tomato sauce. In a small bowl, beat the butter and flour together until smooth. Bring the stock to the boil in a large saucepan, then whisk in the flour and butter, whisking until smooth and thickened to about the consistency of double cream. Add the tomatoes, then set aside.

2. Toss the chicken in flour and shake off excess. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a large shallow pan, then fry the chicken until lightly golden all over. You may need to do this in batches, using 1 tbsp oil each time. Return legs and thighs to the pan, pour over tomato sauce, then simmer, uncovered, for 30 mins. Add the breasts, then simmer for another 20 mins. until the breast meat is just cooked and leg meat tender.

4. While the chicken simmers, boil the eggs for 10 mins, cool quickly under running cold water, then peel and quarter.

5. Melt the butter in another pan and gently fry the onion, pepper and celery for 10 mins until softened.  Add to the chicken pan with the chorizo, ham, eggs, and parsley, also add the rest of the rub from the day before, heat for a few more minutes and then serve.

Recipe taken from BBC GoodFood  magazine, January 2007. Recipe by Paul Prudhomme.

Vegetable Tagine 

This recipe can be found here;

http://www.greenkitchenstories.com/moroccan-vegetable-tagine/

Last weekend my family came over for my birthday party so I cooked for them also, on Sunday we had Roast Lamb with Garlic and Rosemary, our own home reared lamb. On Monday I made Glazed Hams with Herby Potatoes and Cauliflower Cheese, again the hams were our own home reared, these ones had been cured in a salt brine.

To finish off my food extravaganza on Sunday I made Strawberry Jam with shop bought strawberries (we only planted strawberries last year so don't have enough to make jam). I then made a sponge cake with a strawberry jam and cream filling and some soda bread. 

 Hwph, need to have a sit down before I start dinner.

Fair Weather Farmer?

I am often asked what I do on bad weather days, well the answer is the same as I do on good weather days, there are some jobs on the farm that have to be done regardless of rain, snow, hail and heat waves.  In fact, extremes of weather can cause more work. For example, if the weather is really bad my goats have to stay in the grange (they hate getting wet), if this is the case then I have to cart hay down to the grange for them to eat and I have to ensure they have access to fresh water, which means carrying buckets of it from the stream.  My usual routine in the winter is to go down to the grange in the morning and let the goats out and then tether a couple of them where I want them to eat the brambles. I then go and check on the sheep, again in snowy weather they need hay too and I can't carry enough hay down for both sets of animals, so it means two hikes up and down the hill.  Once I have sorted out the sheep and the goats I then hike back up the hill, collect the pig food and go and feed them, again ensuring they have fresh water.  In the evening I do the whole routine again, this time un-tethering the goats and putting them back in the grange.  The whole routine takes between one and one-and-a-half hours because of the distance between the animal enclosures.  Our lower grange is only accessible on foot. I could drive up to the pig pen but I would only do that in very bad weather, because of the condition of our track it is usually easier to walk up even in bad weather.

On a good weather day, I will often continue with outside work such as moving the sheep fencing, clearing remains of bramble thickets that the goats have already eaten so that new grass will grow there and this will then become pasture.  I will clean out the animal housing, clip hooves, carry out routine medical treatments, erect new fencing or shelters, move the animals to new pasture, dig my vegetable patches...the list is endless!

When the weather is so bad that I can't do any of the usual outside jobs I can usually be found in the house making large batches of soup which I pressure can for the store cupboard, or I will bake bread, cake and biscuits.  I will often write my blog when the weather is not so good. 

Summer brings different weather related problems, it gets too hot to do a lot of really physical jobs, so I try to get up early and do a couple of hours work before the sun gets too high in the sky.  The animals also drink a lot more water when it is hot so I have to cart large amounts of water about the place.

Extremes of weather are also the times when animals are more likely to become ill and need extra care. In the summer there is an increase in ticks, flies and other parasites that cause animals to become ill and if not treated quickly die.  In wet, humid weather there is a danger from liver fluke, our animals are very prone to this because our land is marshy in some areas. Pigs have to have shelter from the sun as they can become dehydrated very quickly.  Our goats with white hair often need sun cream on their ears otherwise they get sun burnt.  I have to be very vigilant in extreme weather conditions and watch my animals carefully for any signs of illness.

Since starting the farm I have become almost obsessive about the weather forecast, planning is done on a weekly basis based on the forecast, my plans often have to change at the last minute if the weather isn't quite what I was expecting.  Some times when we have bad weather for more than a day or two I do get a bit frustrated because I can't get on with things that need to be done, but on the plus side it means I get a bit of a rest, a chance to recharge my batteries.

Certainly life is never dull on the farm, I can never say I am bored and I enjoy the challenge of never knowing what is going to happen next. I also get a great sense of achievement when I have accomplished something I have been planning for a while, often having to wait for just the right weather or season to be able to complete it.

I would advise anyone that is feeling a bit fed-up or depressed to get out on a farm or do something physical such as going for a walk on a regular basis, try to walk in the countryside where you can appreciate nature.  Before I had the farm I would try to take regular exercise, the only problem was when the weather was bad I wouldn't bother going out, now because I have the animals I have to go out and I find I don't mind at all.

Jambonade

Having taken two of our pigs to the abattoir and being told that they wouldn't butcher them, our pigs were about 20 kilos live weight, this size is usually left whole for spit roast. So I had a baptism of fire trying to learn how to butcher a pig whilst actually doing the butchering. It is said that one of the best ways to learn is hands-on, our brains remember more of a process if we carry the process out rather than reading about it or watching a video. I would have been lost without the Internet, I used You Tube videos to learn how to do the butchering. I have a couple of books with quiet a lot of detail but watching a video of it is much more useful. I was very nervous when i went to collect the carcasses, I was worried that I would take one look at them and be sick. I am very squeamish generally and just did not know how I would react. As the door of the cold store opened and I saw my two pigs hanging there, I felt a wave of emotions; sadness, pride, fear...they didn't look like my pigs anymore, they had been transformed into meat, no different then in a butchers shop. The guy handed me a bag of offal, I didn't look at it, just placed it in the car. I realised that the carcasses were still whole and I had asked for them to be cut in half, so I asked the butcher to do this, I didn't watch as he cut each in two ( a bit silly considering I was going to be cutting them up further in less than an hour!). I placed the halved carcasses in the back of the car on clean towels and off I set. I was very glad that I hadn't been asked if I wanted the blood, although I had watched a video on making black pudding, I don't think I could have done it. It was very strange driving past the pig pens with the two carcasses in the back of the car. Once I arrive home I went back to the butchering video, the only way I would be able to do the butchering was by watching and then pausing the video at each stage. The first thing I had to do was cut off the heads which had been left attached to one side of the bodies. Of the whole butchering process this was almost the worst bit, and it had to be done first. I turned the carcass so the face was away from me and I cut through at the neck, I was surprised at how easy it was to cut through, worst bit over. After that it was a matter of cutting the back legs off to make hams, these I hung up whilst I continued to work on the carcass. Next I cut off the front legs at the shoulder. I was learning from two different videos, one English, the other American, as I had two pigs to work on I decided to do one in the American style and the other in the English style. The American way seemed less complicated, but this could be because the video was more detailed or because this style suited the size of my pigs better. Once the back and front legs had been removed I was left with the torso, this was divided into chops, ribs and roasts. The next stage was to salt the hams, I did two dry salted and one in brine (the other was going to a friend in return for the loan of the butchering equipment). Dry salting involved rubbing salt all over the ham and into every crevise. I then lined a large plastic box with a 2 cms layer of salt, put the ham on top of this and then poured salt into the box to completely cover the ham, ensuring there was at least 2 cms of salt between the ham and the box sides and top. On top of this I placed a heavy oven dish which I then placed a weight into and then the lid of the box. You cannot use metal when doing this as the salt would corrode it. The boxed hams were placed in a cold room. I was using the Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall meat book for the instructions, which state that hams must be left in the salt for 3 days per kilo. The method for ham in brine involves desolving salt in hot water, letting it cool and then placing the ham in the brine solution. The ham has to be weighted to ensure it is completely submerged in the brine, again I used a new plastic box with lid and placed a casserole dish on top of the ham, then sealed it with the box lid. Next I dry salted belly pork with a mixture of salt, peppercorns and herbs, and placed these in a box, these would make bacon/lardons. I didn't hold out much hope of getting any decent bacon as the bellies looked too fatty with not a lot of meat. I had read on the Internet that this is an unfortunate trait with pot-bellied pigs, their bellies are too fatty! By this time it was about 9pm in the evening, I had been dividing up the two pig carcasss since 11am with a brief break to go and feed my animals, so I called it a day. The next morning I tackled the shoulders, by far the most difficult process. I decided to use the shoulder meat for sausages, however removing the bones from the meat was not easy primarily because the shoulder bone is attached to the leg bone at right angles to each other, but I perceivered and eventually obtained about 3 kilos of good quality pork for the sausages and chorizo. I put this meat through the mincer on a course setting, I then split it in half, added dried breadcrumbs and seasoning to one half, then halved this again, to one half I added nothing more, to the other I added a selection of chopped herbs, both were put through the mincer again. I then washed the casings which I had bought at the local supermarket by flushing them through with water. I changed the nossle on the mincer to the sausage stuffing one, loaded the clean casing onto this and then loaded the machine with the peppered sausage meat. It took twenty minutes to make a length of sausage which once twisted into individual sausages became twelve large, fat traditional English style sausages. The process was far easier than i had thought it would be, whether this was because my machine is a good one I do not know, I don't have anything to compare it with. Next I made the herb sausages and both sets were hung up to dry out whilst I made the chorizo. This involved adding various quantities of wine and spices, I made two varieties, a traditional french saussison with red wine and garlic, and a Spanish chorizo with paprika. The meat mixture goes through the sausage stuffer in the same way as sausages but the casing used is much wider, so it was slightly more of a challenge, but still not as difficult as I expected. The next time I do sausages I will only put the meat through the mincer once and then stuff the casings, by the time I had processed it twice and then it went through the mincer again when stuffing it was very smooth and pate like, I would prefer a courser texture. I also found that because I used shoulder pork, the sausages were very lean, next time I will add back more fat. Despite the smooth texture and leanness the sausages are absolutely delicious and I am looking forward to making more in a few weeks. I can't tell you what the salami is like yet as it is still hanging up drying, we have to leave it for 6-12 weeks. The hams were removed from the salt after a few days, rinsed and dried off and then hung up in muslin bags in my utility room,we have to wait until May before we can start to eat them, I hope we can wait that long! Next I made pork scratchings by roasting some belly pork at a high temperature, every twenty minutes the fat is poured off and this fat becomes lard. The smell isn't very nice but the resulting crackling is delicious. I was suppose to make brawn out of the pigs heads, I couldn't bring myself to chop them into quarters so Steve had to do it, I then put one in brine, cooked it in water with herbs for over three hours, but when I looked at it in the pot I just couldn't bring myself to complete the process, so it went in the bin. I gave the other one to my friend and she did make brawn from it and it is delicious if you can get past the thought of what it is made from. I shall not be attempting to do anything with the pigs heads in future. At the moment we have various chops, roasts and sausages in the freezer, bones for stock some of which I made into pea and ham soup, we have a 'green' or brined ham in the fridge, which will be boiled, glazed and roasted and of course the hams and chorizo. It was a very busy couple of days, a very steep learning curve but every time I open the freezer or see the hams hanging I feel very pleased and a little bit proud, for the most part because I coped with taking the pigs to the abattoir and then eating them, something I was never entirely sure I would be able to do. Have you any hints and tips on processing pork? Maybe you are thinking about getting a couple of pigs for meat, if you have any questions post them in the comments box below.

The End is Nigh - Abattoir Day

After months of waiting the day finally arrived for the first two of the piglets to go to the abattoir.  Two of the sheep should have gone before Christmas, but my registration as a smallholder hadn't been completed.  I am quite relieved that it is the pigs we are taking first, I haven't got attached to the piglets, it is difficult when there are ten of them and they all look much the same. Perhaps because I knew we would eat the pigs I have deliberately kept my distance. I think anyone considering keeping farm animals as opposed to pets, ponders whether they will actually be able to deal with the decision to take an animal to the abattoir let alone eat the meat.  Perhaps the number of piglets we had has been a blessing in disguise, the cost of feeding twelve pigs for the last five months has been approximately €25 per week, it is not feasible for us to continue to buy this amount of feed indefinitely. So I guess the decision has been made easier by the practicalities, the longer we keep the pigs the more out-of-pocket we will be.

The first problem is catching the piglets, particularly if you need to catch specific ones. Of course we have designed a holding pen that should make it easier to catch them (see previous blog post - What a Pig Sty!).
Last Sunday evening Steve and I set off on our mission to catch the two largest girl piglets and get them into the transportation cage ready for our 4.30 a.m. trip to the abattoir on Monday morning. I was not feeling optimistic, one of the larger girl piglets had never been known to enter the holding pen, she always stays in the permanent pen with her mum. I prepared the holding pen, opened the door in between and threw pig nuts on the ground as is our routine, Steve went into the girls permanent pen to distract the mums.  Within ten minutes I had the two largest piglets and two smaller ones in the holding area, time to shut the connecting door. That was when all hell let loose, all four of them panicked and started running around squealing. Have you ever heard a pig squeal when it is frightened?  It is the most ear piercing noise you will ever hear.  We backed away from the pen once we had the door secure in the hope that the piglets would calm down, which they did.

The next stage in the process was to tattoo the two that we were taking to the abattoir. You can't take animals to the abattoir unless they have official identification, that is ear tags for most animals, including pigs, or you can tattoo your pigs with your official registration number.  We decided that tattooing was probably much easier than ear tags for our pigs, either option is going to cause the pigs some pain and distress.  Tattoos are suppose to be on the pigs shoulder or inner ear, we opted for the shoulder.  What we didn't realise is that when you do the tattoo you can't see it through the pigs bristles as it doesn't produce solid lines, but pin pricks, these are only visible after the pig has been killed and its bristles removed.  I was concerned that we hadn't done the tattooing properly and that we would be turned away from the abattoir.  The thought of having to return home with the pigs after all the stress of catching them and getting them there was quite upsetting.  We took our tattoo equipment with us in the hope that if we hadn't done it properly someone at the abattoir would show us how the experts do it.

Next we had to grab the pigs we were taking and get them into the transportation cage (this is actually a large dog cage), we can fit one of our fully grown pigs in it or two of the piglets. The easiest way to catch pigs is to grab them by the back legs and lift them clean off the ground, this is suppose to reduce their movement, it does but they can still wriggle an awful lot and if you don't hold on tight they will escape your clutches quite easily.  The other reason for grabbing them this way is their head and therefore sharp teeth are held away from you.  Doing this with piglets is one thing, trying to do it with adult pigs is extremely difficult, particularly when you consider the weight of them.  For adult pot-bellies you will need two people to carry each pig.  For full-size pig breeds this isn't possible, for two reasons; first you wouldn't be able to lift them and secondly they need to be transported in an animal trailer not a cage. It is much easier to train pigs in the same way you train a dog, get them to follow you by walking in front of them with food, if they follow give them a bit of food as a treat, keep doing this on a regular basis and you should have no trouble getting your pigs to go where you want them to.

Our pigs came to us when they were over a year old, we only had them for a month before they gave birth to the piglets, this was unfortunate as we didn't really get a chance to get to know them properly or have time to attempt to carry out any training with them. Because the mums didn't know us well we didn't go into the pen much when the piglets were little, I had read that the mums can be very aggressive when they have newborns.  Now, five months later I don't think we would have the same problems, the mums seem quite happy for us to go in the pen, particularly if we take them apples or carrots as a treat.

Grabbing the piglets and putting them into the cage went well.  One of the difficulties of moving two pigs in the same cage is that if you put one in the cage and then open the door to put the other one in, the first will try to escape, they are very fast and if they are running straight at you there is nothing to get hold of to stop them.  To solve this problem we put the cage upright so the door is at the top and then the piglets are lowered into the cage gently, once they are both in then you lock the door and very gently turn the cage so that it is the correct way up.

Our plan was to leave the two piglets in the cage overnight, we left the cage in the holding pen as a double precaution, then if they managed to get out of the cage they still couldn't go anywhere.  Part of the reason for doing this was because we had to leave for the abattoir at 4.30 a.m. in the morning when it would still be dark. Getting the piglets into the cage in advance also meant that they would be much calmer by the time we had to put the cage into the car.  In fact, when we went to collect them in the morning they didn't make a noise at all, I think they were half asleep.

When we arrived at the abattoir there was one guy in front of us unloading two of the biggest pigs I have ever seen.  I went into the office to give my paperwork in, the transportation document which needs to accompany the driver of live animals, this includes your registration number, a copy of it is sent to the EdE (Establissement de l' Elevage).  We then went and unloaded our pigs in their cage into the holding pens, because the holding pens are for larger animals we had to leave our pigs in their cage and I made arrangements to go back and collect the cage later that day.  That was it, within half an hour of leaving our home we were driving out of the abattoir having left the two pigs to meet their fate.  I thought I would have felt quite emotional or upset when we left them but I felt a massive sense of relief that they had been accepted at the abattoir and that everything had gone so well, in particular the pigs seemed quite calm and not in the least big upset by the change in their routine.

When I went back to the abattoir later that day to collect the cage, the lady in the office asked me to speak with the butcher, I assumed it was to explain how I wanted the butchering carried out, but the butcher didn't want to butcher our pigs, he said normally pigs of this size (they were 15 and 16 kilos dead weight), are not butchered as they are for spit roasting, I agreed that I would pick up the full carcasses a few days later and then dashed home to do some research on butchering pigs.  Next blog; A Steep Learning Curve

What a Pig Sty!

When our pigs Whitney and Wrinkles arrived chez nous we had this naive idea that we would pop them in a paddock with electric fencing and they would be happy as...well pigs in mud. We placed the cages we used to transport them inside the fence, opened them and off they ran, straight through the fence and they just kept running. It took us a month to persuade them to come back.  In that month we set about building an escape proof pig pen, see 'Wanted Dead or Alive' blog post. In this time Whitney had her piglets, they were born free, a few weeks after she decided freedom wasn't such a great thing with three mouths to feed, she kept hanging around the pig pen which Wrinkles was already occupying, so I opened the gate and she gave herself up.  Things quickly settled down once we got the pigs in the pig pen. Wrinkles, Whitney and the three little pigs were soon joined by Wrinkles seven piglets!  

Argh, what a lovely story, at this point I should say "and they all lived happily ever after", but I would be lying. Of the ten piglets, there are three males (we were very lucky there were only three), the boys need to be separated from the girls preferably before they are three months old, although opinion seems to be divided on exactly what age they are capable of reproducing.  Having not long finished one pig pen, we had to then start building another to put the boys in.   We decided that the best position for the new pen was right next to the existing one, this makes pig keeping easier, I wanted to incorporate a way to transfer pigs between the two pens easily. I pondered the design of the new pen for some time. First we needed a pig size doorway between the two areas, the pig pens are in the ruin of an old farm house, therefore the walls are dry stone, not the easiest of materials to try to put an opening in, but Steve thought we could do it and there didn't seem any other way.  Knocking out the doorway couldn't proceed until we had a way to close it off again immediately, otherwise the pigs would be able to escape from their existing pen.  We decided that a sliding door would be the best option and Steve set about making a door with a handle to pull it upwards and a catch to hold it in place when it was in the open position.  We could then knock through. As I guessed, this was not straight forward, the wall above the doorway started to collapse and we quickly had to add lintels on both sides and then build the wall above these back up.  Whilst we were working on the doorway we moved massive boulders to block up the hole so the pigs couldn't use the doorway before we had the new pen completed. I then decided that what we needed was some sort of holding pen, we couldn't choose which pigs went through the door but if we had a holding area we could then pick out the ones we wanted. A lot of our gates, fences and animal shelters are built with pallets because they are often free and very sturdy.  We worked out that five one meter pallets would give us a holding area of one meter wide by two meters long, two pallets down each side attached to the wall where the doorway is and then the pallet at the opposite end would be hinged and bolted to make a gate. See picture below.  The gate looks a bit skew-wif because the ground is on a slope.

Inner Holding Area Pen

During this time I also started re-building the back and side walls of the area, first I tried dry-stone walling but it just kept falling down, then I decided to cement the wall, this was better but at the time the weather was fairly cold and often the cement didn't set properly or it was very brittle because the temperatures were too low.  I persevered but it was slow going, I managed to build the walls up to about one meter and then decided to put pig mesh fencing on the inside in some areas just to be sure the pen was pig proof. Once all this was done we then added another pallet gate for access to the main sty. Pictures of the  finished pen.

Outer gate and side of holding pen

Back and side walls with mesh fencing

Inner holding pen

Finally we could attempt to separate the boys and girls.  I spent a week just opening the door and throwing food into the holding pen so that the piglets would get use to going in there, this worked very well apart from Wrinkles deciding she wanted to check out the new accommodation too, she kept sticking her head through the doorway and blocking the way for the piglets to get in, one time she managed to knock the door out of its holding and emergency repair work had to be carried out. 

The holding pen has definitely been a success, although getting all of the pigs you want in there at the same time is not easy. We managed to get two of the three males in there at the same time along with a couple of the girls, at this point I closed the door to the other pen off, the gate at the opposite end was already locked and I wasn't going to open it incase they made a run for it, I just climb over into the holding pen and then grab the piglets I want by the back legs, there isn't anywhere for them to run so it makes it much easier. I lifted the two boys over the inner pen and popped them down in their new sty.  Re-opening the door between the two pens allowed the girls to go back to their own sty.  The third boy was a bit of a mummies boy and wouldn't leave Wrinkles to come through to the new section, so we had to chase him around and catch him rather than use the holding pen.  We have also used the holding pen to capture one of the girls when we sold her and to capture two more ready to go to the abattoir.  More on our trip to the abattoir in the next blog post.

Do you keep pigs?  How do you manage moving them around your holding?  Every time I watch a dvd or video of pigs they are calmly plodding about with their owner, usually the owner has a board and stick or a bucket of food, that is it.  Our pigs are not calm, they are not particularly friendly (at least the piglets aren't, the mums aren't too bad they will eat out of my hand and come to the fence to say hello), they are fine unless we try to go into their pen then they start running around and panicking.  Trying to clean out the pen is a nightmare with pigs running about all over the place squealing!  I have noticed since we separated the boys that they are much calmer, perhaps it is because there are only three in a pen. It will be interesting to see if the girls become calmer when there are less of them.  When we get down to two piglets and the two mums I am going to attempt to train them with a board and stick, could be interesting or a total disaster, I will let you know how it goes.  In the meantime if you keep pigs and you have any helpful tips please pass them on.

Registered At Last

After months of toing and froing, I am finally registered as a smallholder in France.  The process itself was not too complicated, but the lady that dealt with me seemed to be quite new to the job and made a couple of mistakes which delayed things.

First Step
The first stage in the process was a visit to the DDCSPP - Direction Départmentale de la Cohésion Sociale et e la Protection des Populations.....Sub-department, Service de la Santé et de la Protection Animales!  I took myself off into Tarbes one day and eventually found the offices.I spoke to a lovely girl who seemed completely puzzled as to why I was there, I showed her the procedure document which had been printed off the web. First I was told they couldn't do anything at that time as they were in the process of moving offices, I asked where they were moving to so I could find them when I returned, they were moving up one flight of stairs! Eventually I got her to photocopy my paperwork and open my dossier, someone would contact me the next week.....they never did.

Step Two
According to the procedure document I had, the next stage was to go to the Establissement de l' Elevage (EdE). Having heard nothing from the DDCSPP, I decided to take matters into my own hands and go directly to this office to see if I could get any further. The lady at the EdE explained that there had been many changes to the procedures and that I didn't need to go to the DDCSPP, she seemed very efficient, asked me what animals I had and then filled in a load of forms for me and asked me for a cheque for €15, a very reasonable sum I thought. I asked how long the procedure would take and she replied a couple of weeks and that I should receive my documents in the post, she then gave me a whole forest worth of paperwork to read. I was so pleased, it all seemed so simple and straightforward, not at all like it usually is in France.  The only identification they asked for was proof of address.

Non-Commercial Farmer
I should point out at this stage that I was registering as a non-commercial farmer, the meat from the animals I rear is for our consumption and not to be sold. I registered as a breeder of pigs, sheep and goats. I have a CHEPTAL number, which is used for the identification of my animals, but I don't have a SIRET number because I am not a commercial farmer.

Commercial Farmer
I understand that to register as a commercial farmer you need to go to the Chamber of Agriculture (which the EdE is a department of),  you will need a qualification or to prove that you have a number of years experience (I think it is five) working in a farming capacity, you can then register as a 'Cotisant Solidaire'. You can read more about the Cotisant Solidare here (sorry in French). Another way to register if you don't have the qualifications or experience is to find someone that has a diploma in agriculture and set up the French equivalent of a company with them, they can either work in the business or be a sleeping partner/director.  I understand that there are further restrictions relating to registering as a commercial farmer, these are related to the percentage of your income that is derived from farming activities, but I don't know the details.

Delays
A week after I visited the EdE I received a phone call from the lady that dealt with me, she apologised for having made a mistake, I should have paid €30 not €15. I still have no idea what these payments are for but it seems to relate to the number of species of animals kept; goats and sheep are one category, pigs are completely separate.  I drove the 40 kilometer round trip back to the office to pay the difference. Whilst there I asked for my CHEPTEL number and also whether I needed to order ear tags or they ordered them.  The lady was happy to fill out my order for the tags and I asked for the tattoo equipment for the pigs as I was under the impression that the pigs needed both an ear tag and tattoo to go to the abattoir. This turned out to be my mistake, they can have either one or the other.  The tattoo equipment is very expensive, but I am glad we ordered this as I think it will be much easier to tattoo the pigs than to do the ear tags.  I paid the huge amount of €131.90 for the tags and tattoo equipment! 

I left the office expecting to receive a parcel and documents within a couple of weeks.  A week later I got another call, another mistake, they had charged me the wrong amount, could I bring in a revised cheque.  I thought they said I had paid thirty cents too little.  I was very annoyed at the thought of having to drive another 40 kilometer round trip to pay thirty cents.  As it turned out Steve was going to Tarbes a couple of days later so he went to the EdE office.  It turned out I had paid thirty cents too much and they delayed the order because of this, grrhhhh.

Delivery At Last

Finally on Tuesday I received a parcel, inside was the tattooing equipment but no tags. I still haven't received any documentation from EdE.  I telephoned EdE and they explained that the tattooing and tagging equipment come from different places, the tags take about three weeks.  But as I only need to tattoo the pigs I can go ahead with organising for them to go to the abattoir.  Strangely enough the identification number for the pigs bares no resembles to the CHEPTEL number I have been given, I asked the lady about this and she said, no they are completely separate registrations. I also have two different types of movement forms; one for pigs and one for sheep and goats!  I will scan all the documents I have been given and post them on my blog at some point.

Update

Yesterday I went to the abattoir and spoke to a lovely lady. I can take the pigs on a Monday or Wednesday morning between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m.!  Looks like Steve and I will be chasing pigs again on Sunday afternoon.  I will let you know how it all goes.

The Silly Season

We have had a very busy few days here, carrying out routine tasks and doing extra jobs caused by the bizarre behaviour of some of the animals! A few months ago a friend of mine who also keeps animals said to me "wait until the silly season starts",now I know what she was talking about.

So what is it that is causing this 'silly season'? Hormones of course.  In the last few months Bandit our uncastrated male goat has gone from a reasonably sweet tempered (for a male goat) animal to causing havoc and annoyance wherever and whenever possible. This bad behaviour is aimed at the animals and us. For the last few months Bandit has insisted on showing the girls who is boss, by making a strange gutteral noise at them, pushing them along with his nose or head and kicking them with one front leg. I have been trying to get a video of the kicking because it is quite funny, he doesn't hurt the others, he just seems to be bossing them about. I think we might have to get Bandit a football to kick, perhaps we could teach all the goats and sheep to kick a ball and set up a match between the two sets of animals.

Bandit has also insisted over the last few weeks in interfering in everything I am trying to do, if he could talk I am sure he would be saying "no,you don't want to be doing it like that", sometimes this behaviour is funny, for example I was moving the sheep fence and every time I pushed one of the uprights into the ground he would come along behind me and pull it back out, this was very annoying for me, but would have made a great video for one of those funny shows on tv.

Unfortunately Bandit has also decided to interfere when I am trying to give Maisie her injections, it is difficult enough to give a goat an injection on your own without having another goat sticking his head in the way, trying to get the bottle of antibiotics or worse still  the needle because he thinks it is something nice to eat.  The other  day I turned around to find he had taken my rucksack and was pulling all the contents out and trying to eat it.

As for the sheep, their recent behaviour has been even more bizarre because they are usually so placid and well behaved.  Last week they escaped from their fenced area about three times so I thought they needed to be moved to new pasture. I moved them and within hours they had escaped again, admittedly the fence wasn't electrified but we haven't needed to use electric for months because they have been so good. I rounded  them up and put them back in. A few hours later I rounded them up again, this time I noticed that two of the rams were pushing into each other quite a lot.  The next morning Steve and I went down to find Col our largest and oldest ram completely tangled up in the fence, very strange as he is a very wise sheep, he is very good at getting the other horned ram to pull down the fence getting tangled in it in the process, then Col just steps over it. We untangled him fixed the fence and went off to do other jobs.  At this point I decided that we ought to connect the electric fence equipment, although I knew we wouldn't get time that day. When we went back in the evening the sheep were gone again, we found them up on a ridge (some of our land is terraced because it is so steep), as we went to retrieve them, we could see Col and Mint running along the top of the ridge smacking into each other with the other three sheep standing watching, in my imagination the three viewing this scene were shouting "fight, fight", like kids at school do. This amusing thought didn't last very long because just at that moment Col rammed Mint off the top of the ledge and he fell 2 metres, luckily his fall was broken by the huge bramble bushes that grow in this area. Immediately after doing this Col decided to attempt suicide by throwing himself off the ledge, he also fell into the brambles. By this point it was dusk, but we knew we had to get the two rams out of the brambles and check they hadn't injured themselves seriously.  If sheep get stuck they stop moving around and can die quite quickly, particularly at night and in the cold. I moved the spectators  back to their enclosure then went back to the top of the ridge to direct Steve to the area I had seen them go over, Steve hacked his way through the brambles, these are no ordinary brambles, they are thickets that have been growing unchecked for many years, they are taller than us.  By this point it was semi darkness and I was struggling to see anything, both sheep weren't moving, but eventually we heard a slight movement and Steve located Mint, cut him out and amazingly there was no damage.  Another twenty minutes later we managed to locate Col and cut him out.  What had caused these normally placid sheep that usually get on so well together to behave in such a mad way....Baabara was on heat and they were fighting for the lovely ladies affections. I am hoping when they got back to their enclosure she told them how stupid they both were, I am guessing she did (or they frightened themselves when they fell) as the next day all was calm in the sheep pen. We did put the electric fence back on though just in case. I now know why shepherds only have one ram in each flock. I now have to decide which is ram to spare from going to the abattoir. Personality wise I would choose Mint, he is much friendlier and easy to manage. Col is a much bigger and stronger ram so it makes sense to keep him if we want strong lambs, I am just not sure I want my lambs to have his miserable untrusting temperament.

So hormones, in particular testosterone seems to be causing us an awful lot of extra work at the moment. Anyone know how long the silly season lasts?

Drugged Up Sheep

My main animal related job today was to give the sheep their worming treatment before moving them to their new pasture. I only have five sheep and I managed to catch four of them within minutes and administer the drug, Col the fifth and largest of our sheep evaded capture, as always. 

Col is a strange sheep, very serious, very cautious, if he was a person I would say he probably has a similar personality to Gordon Brown, the UK ex-Prime Minister (not sure whether to apologise to Col or Gordon for this comparison), if Col was human he would definitely be an accountant or a tax inspector!

Anyway I digress. The problem now is that when you worm animals kept together they all need to receive the treatment, preferably within a short time of each other. All of the flock are then kept on their existing pasture for 3-5 days, although opinion varies and depends on the treatment given, this allows them to pass any worms on pasture that will then not be reused in the immediate future. The animals are then moved onto clean ground and hopefully remain healthy and happy. 

Because of Cols lack of enthusiasm for taking his medicine I am now waiting for Steve to get back from work so that we can hopefully catch him by surprise this evening. I am sure it will be a surprise as it is now pitch black outside and we are going to be trying to catch him by head torch light! Having lived In Yorkshire before moving to France I heard many a tale of strange goings on in the dark with sheep! I now know it was nothing untoward, just some poor shepherd trying to do his job.  Animals can be so ungrateful.

Whilst waiting  for Steve to arrive home, I shall regale you with the interesting details of the drug I am using on the sheep, obviously not very interesting to anyone that doesn't keep sheep, so you might want to skip a couple of paragraph. I am using a worming treatment called Cydectine, according to the instructions it should be administered every 4-6 weeks, it kills one type of worm in 4 weeks and another in 5 weeks, BUT there is a lot of debate about the build up of immunity, common sense would suggest that the more often you use a drug the quicker the immunity will build up.  Researching the worming of sheep on the Internet will result in greater confusion, although in general most owners of sheep seem to rotate the brand of wormer to control immunity, the timing of worming varies considerably.  There are of course some valid reasons for this variation, in particular the environment in which your sheep live, if you live in a hot country one would assume that there is a greater risk of contamination, the less land you have in which to rotate the sheep or the more sheep you have per square meter can also increase the risk of contamination, there are so many variables that it makes it difficult for a newbie to know what to do.

Each animal carer must use common sense to decide what drugs to administer and how often, but this common sense only comes about with experience, there can be a very steep learning curve to gain this experience. Before we started keeping animals, I thought I had researched the subject quite well, but things did not go according to plan.  My plan was to get some goats as we have 12.5 hectares of land that was half and half pasture and woodland, that was what the cadastral recorded the land as, but after between 5 - 10 years of no animals grazing on the land it was hard to call it anything other than bramble and bracken fields. That is were the goats came in, they would clear the brambles and bracken which would allow grass to grow again and then sheep could be grazed on the grass.  So the plan was put into action, five goats arrived, they cleared sections of land and then seven sheep arrived to munch the grass, except after a couple of weeks we had a very poorly goat and the sheep were not thriving, they had scour (diarrhea).  Both goats and sheep came from the Gers, very dry compared to our mountainous region, our land was damp and marshy even in the height of summer, I thought the change had caused the health problems.  A day later a lamb died, another was very poorly and the goat was emaciated looking, I went to the vets to discuss the situation.  The vet immediately diagnosed liver fluke (Douve in French), he also asked me about their worming program and I had to admit that I had no idea about it, I hadn't even asked when I acquired the animals.  All the animals were wormed and given a liver fluke treatment immediately.  Unfortunately another lamb died and this may have been due to my inexperience. I didn't think to mark the sheep as we gave them their treatments and at this point I didn't really know the sheep individually, it is possible that I inadvertently gave one sheep two doses of treatment and another missed out altogether.  After this fiasco I read up more on sheep illnesses and treatments and found that I should have quarantined any new animals coming in for a couple of weeks and given them the treatments if I didn't know their previous history. My plan to have the sheep follow the goats over each pasture was quickly modified, each group now has a completely separate set of grazing areas, over time I will go back to my follow-on plan but there will be periods of months between the goats grazing on a plot and the sheep then going onto the same pasture.  I also ensure that I worm both sets of animals within a few days of each other despite them not coming into contact with each other. 

I still face dilemmas regarding routine medical treatments, I don't want my animals to be pumped full of chemicals, we are trying to live an ecological life here, but I also don't want my animals to suffer needlessly. I am now trying to use common sense to determine the best course of treatments. The last time I wormed my animals was September, they all seem fairly healthy but I am worried I am pushing my luck, and one thing I have learnt about sheep is that when they become ill the speed at which they succumb is phenomenal. Two sheep will be going to the abattoir soon and Eleanor my alpine goat has just given birth, her kid won't have any natural resistance, but can gain some resistance from her mother if the mother is wormed within a week of giving birth. So I am biting the bullet and re-worming. I will re-treat in March before the weather starts to turn hot, summer is the worst time for parasites causing health problems.

Eleanor with her kid January

Since starting to write this post Steve has returned, we went off in the dark to capture Col, mission completed.  When we got to the sheep pasture Col and two other sheep were outside the fence, as we walked up Col launched himself at the net fence and got his horn stuck in it, I grabbed him, Steve held onto him whilst I loaded up the vile and it was all over in minutes. There are some things you just cannot do on your own, giving Col his medicine is one of them.

Wood Weekend

Christmas and New Year have been an gone, we had a bit of a rest other than feeding and moving the animals. Our thoughts this week turned to wood, probably because our supply was dwindling, and of course winter is the time to be cutting down trees before the sap starts to rise again in the spring.

This is our third winter here and we are still not self-sufficient in wood terms. When we moved here there was no existing wood store, although plenty of fallen trees. The first winter we cut some of the fallen wood and hoped it had been down long enough to burn well, it didn't.  Last winter we had cut some wood but not enough to last the whole winter, so we bought half our winter supply in (about 4 stere).  In  spring we decided not to cut wood for this winter but for next winter so that it would be properly seasoned. We have so far this winter bought in 4 stere of 1 meter lengths of mixed wood, although primarily chestnut, we then cut these into thirds.

On Saturday we took a trailer and went to pick up the wood and today we cut it and stacked it, which took us about 3 hours.  We have a good system now, Steve cuts I load the wheelbarrow and then transport the wood to our primary wood store next to the house. When we first came here I could only do a few wheelbarrows before I ran out of energy and muscle power, today I did the full 3 hours with one tea break, although I guess I will be aching tomorrow!

Cutting wood is hard work, particularly when you still have to do all your other daily chores, however it is very satisfying to see the wood piled up. There is an old saying that cutting your own wood warms you twice over, once when you cut and stack it and then again when you burn it.

I also now make my own faggots, no they aren't meat balls, but bundles of twigs tied with string (picture below). I make the faggots from all the branches and twigs from the saplings we cut down around the house. I got the idea for making these from a fiction book I read that was set in medival times, seemingly  in towns it was common for woman to sell the faggots from a basket on the street. We no longer have to buy fire lighters and have no trouble getting a roaring fire going in minutes.

Before coming to France I had never lite a wood fire before and use to really struggle to get them going.  My method now is to put a layer of crumpled up paper, topped by  layer of cardboard, then a faggot and then small  branches, these are all arranged in a wigwam shape. I will try to remember to take a photo of the set fire before I light it and post it here. Until then here are todays wood related photos.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year,hope you had a peaceful and enjoyable Christmas.

We have spent some of the Christmas holiday catching up on animal jobs. We finally managed to separate the male piglets from the female and put them in the new pig pen, photos in next blog post.

We rounded up the goats and moved them down to their winter quarters again. Every time I have moved them down to the barn they have broken free and come back up to their summer enlosure.  This time we tethered Eleanor and Masie.  I have been getting worried about getting them to stay near/in the barn as both female goats are pregnant and I wanted to get them use to the barn before they give birth.  Our timing couldn't  have been better, we moved them on the 31st and this morning I went down to find we had a new addition, Eleanor hàs given birth to a very cute and rather sturdy little kid, that definitely looks like its father Bandit.  It is very fluffy so I haven't determined whether it is a boy or a girl yet.  We are calling it January because it was born on the 1st January.  What a great start to the new year.  Thank goodness the weather is fairly mild at the moment.