November marks the beginning of the end, it is the month when we begin to end the year.  We butcher the birds, harvest the last of the walnuts, cut down trees for the Christmas tree lot, and kick off the last frenzied efforts of the year.   

The last few days have been especially busy.  We went into the mountains on Friday and began cutting trees for our Christmas tree lot.  Most of the trees we get are spruce and they are beautiful. 

Sunday and Monday we thinned our flock, which is not-so-secret-code for “butchered.”  It may be a little disconcerting to read that statement after seeing a picture of me with a chainsaw, but rest assured the two are completely unrelated.  (Except: I wore those same Carhartts for butchering.)

These are what we butcher with.

We butchered 5 geese, 6 turkeys (plus one a few days earlier), and 2 ducks.  The turkeys were impressive, our biggest weighed in at 55 lbs live, and 42 lbs dressed. The hens were in the 20 – 30 lb range.  

I never thought I’d get sappy romantic over butchering birds, but it’s a testament to a man’s love for you when he takes over the “dispatch” part of the process because:
Me:  “Okay, I think I got the jugular….  Oh my gosh, it’s flapping.  Okay, it should be done… wait.  oh geeze!  OH MY GOSH IT LOOKED RIGHT AT ME!!!!  I’m a terrible, terrible person!  Oh god!  It saw my soul!!”  
Apparently we reached Jeff’s tolerance level for how much of my wailing and gnashing of teeth he could take.  

When it gets to the point of actually dressing the carcass — pulling the internal organs out and cleaning out the body cavity — I’m apparently “in the zone.”  The annoying zone, maybe, but then I’m all, “Oh my gosh come and look at this!  Look at his liver!  Oh wow, look how beautifully the lungs came out!”

Here’s Jeff and Jackie (a goose/duck/egg customer and friend) with Jackie’s Christmas tree she picked up yesterday.

It’s tough work but few things are as gratifying as living so close to the land.  It’s time-consuming and sure isn’t for everyone, but we sure enjoy it.

Speaking of birds and farming, we have eggs available — chicken and duck — and will have them all winter.  Contact us if you’d like some fresh eggs!

Also, if you want to order any birds for next year (chickens and turkeys), we’ll be taking orders in January and plan to butcher in the spring and in the fall.  (Chickens in the spring; chickens and turkeys in the fall.)

Have a Happy Thanksgiving and hope we see you at our Christmas Tree lot!

It’s fall.  Something about the light and the cool air makes me want to snuggle indoors and write every chance I get.  (My dream life is one of ridin’ and writin’.)  

This time of year is exciting because we finally get to really experience the fruits of our labor.  The hay barn is full (I can’t even tell you how good that feels, it’s like having a huge savings account).  We’ve butchered most of the meat chickens and they are in the freezer.  Dang those guys turned out good — right around 5 to 6 pounds each.  We have some turkeys we’ll butcher in a couple of weeks (just in time for Thanksgiving) and then ducks and geese in December.  

The walnut grove.

I managed to pull myself away from my writing perch and go outside to process walnuts.  My family planted a small “orchard” of about a dozen English Walnut trees.  I’ve avoided dealing with them because they’re so dang messy and time-consuming to get to the meat.  Amazing how inspiring a sunny fall day can be.

 I only got walnuts off one tree and filled this huge dehydrator my parents built about 40 years ago.  (Seriously, this thing is mammoth — about 5’6″ high, with fourteen 3′ x 3′ drying racks.)  Still several trees to go, but maybe I’ll finish this week.  Maybe not.  I have never actually liked walnuts.

The Process

1. The first step is to succumb to the beauty of the day and embrace it.  
   

   Nuts n’ grapes.

2. Next, I grabbed a manure fork as it seemed to be the right size to pick up the fallen nuts.  That turned out to be a pain as it picked up all of the leaves and sticks and everything else, so I just reverted to picking up the nuts by hand.  No biggie.
   

   Using the manure fork.

3. I hauled the lug of nuts down to a little station I set up — a sheet of plywood, a pressure washer, a brick, and some old milk crates.  The nuts still have a nasty husk on them that will turn your hands black if you handle it too much.  I dump the nuts into the milk crates, tip them at an angle using the brick, and then pressure-wash the husks from them. 
   

   Ready for the dehydrator.

4. Once they’re mostly clean – which only takes a few minutes – I spread them on the drying racks from the food dehydrator.  I don’t know if drying them is absolutely necessary.  I cracked a couple of beauties open and ate the meat and they tasted fantastic.  You know how sometimes walnuts can have that bitter after-taste?  None of that here.  (I wonder if that’s related to ripeness?)  

Something I never knew about Black Walnuts (and I was so relieved to know that these trees are English instead of Black) — they are highly toxic to horses.  Something about the tree and nuts can severely damage horse hooves in very short order.  

Walnut day was wonderful, today it’s cool, grey, and rainy.  Fortunately it’s also Baking Day!