Nostalgic Saturday

I know I only read my brother Graham's email for the first time this morning but it made me Nostalgic for so many things, I just had to include it today. I didn't include ALL of his photos, but you get the idea :-)

"Sorry for taking awhile to give you an update on chicken No1. (Graham is growing chickens and this, his first, comes in at a delicious 1.8 kg!)

Here it is before and after (sorry about the picture I must have been shaking with excitement)

I just slow roasted it in the oven on 140 for a bit over an hour. I did absolutely nothing to it other than put a bit of olive oil in the baking tray and covered it with foil. I have had trouble finding time to put it on as most nights I am getting in around 8.30-9pm (got to love day light saving) by which time the last thing I feel like doing is putting on a chook to roast. It’s been sitting in the fridge in its little vacuum bag so on my way home from work the other day I thought I will put it on as soon as I get home and I can watch it before I go out to milk the cows. So I popped it on and got busy doing other things and I think I left it on a bit long. When it came out it was all golden and yummy looking, not to mention the amazing smell. I could have eaten it right away but the cows needed to be milked so covered it up put it back in the turned off oven. After milking the cows I processed another 5 chickens, with the borrowed plucker and stumbled back inside at 9.15pm.

Now I really don’t think I gave this chicken a fair go, I was tired, I had just processed 5 chickens which involves all the yucky stuff (I had washed my hands 2 or 3 times), it was possibly overcooked and it had cooled down to room temperature. I thought what am I going to do with it, the idea of eating chicken was not very appealing, actually eating anything wasn’t appealing. I decided I would just cut it up so could put in sandwiches add it to a curry make a pie or something. I started off with the legs, the meat was quite dark but not dry or tough, I could just pull the meat off with my fingers, then the thighs, wings and finally the breasts. There was quite a pile of meat and my curiosity got the better of me so I tried a little bit.............................., it wasn’t that good, it was great! It melted in my mouth the flavour was unbelievable it was undoubtedly the best chicken I have ever had. I tried another bit and you know what it was just as good. The first piece obviously wasn’t a fluke. By the time I finished cutting it up the pile was a bit smaller than when I started. I bagged it up into little bags and put 2 in the freezer and 2 in the fridge. People don’t know what their missing out on when they buy a factory chook. I was a bit worried that after all the work I had put into them they wouldn’t be any good but I am happy.

So I have got about 30 to go. I had a bit of trouble getting the scalder and plucker set up. My fist attempt with it ruined 2 of the three I did. It wouldn’t pluck and it tore the skin. I skinned the two and boned them out so I didn’t waste them. The water was too cold it needs to be at around 60 degrees C to loosen the feathers for the plucker. It’s an old hot water system that I cut the top off and it couldn’t keep the temp up so I have put a gas ring under it to solve that problem. The plucker was making a mess of them. The legs were getting caught in the hole where the plucked feathers go out. I don’t know how the owners get on with it but I made some modifications and it works well now. It takes about 10min per chicken from when I go and get the chickens out of the paddock to having them bagged up in the freezer, so I have only been doing 5 or so a night. Hopefully this weekend I will get them all finished. I am using the kitchen in the cottage for bagging and freezing them, it saves carting them over to the house and there is room over there for the freezer. It's not full yet!

The eggs are coming in pretty regularly now, I’m getting 5-6 a day from the 8 hens. We couldn’t keep up with them so the other week Nancy took 3 dozen to work to give a way as a bit of a promotion and today she took the first dozen that were getting paid for. I weighed them and they came out at 900g net so I think I should call them extra jumbo, the lid wouldn’t actually shut! At $6 a dozen my first customer was very happy.

I haven’t shown you any pictures of the veggie patch because there wasn’t much to see. I haven’t been able to weed much and my plan is not to do too much anyway, but until the plants get bigger it’s a bit hard to see them.

You can see the corn, some spinach, peas, the brown lines are tomatoes, the green is grass, I haven’t put up the trellis yet.

The pumpkin, squash, zucchini, cucumber, watermelon and rockmelon are all taking off, it’s hard to see them but we’ve been picking artichokes and the beans are really taking off as well.

The veggie patch is approximately 80m2 only half is planted the rest is access. I planted medic and Lucerne in between the beds which I mow for mulch. There is corn, potatoes, eggplant(2types), kale(6types), peas, asparagus, tomatoes (8 types), Spinach (2 types), radicchio, cape gooseberry, carrots (2 types), Beetroot, Salsify, artichokes (2 types), self sown lettuce, Self sown Tomatoes, Fennel, Celery, Leeks, Beans (5 types), cabbage (2 types), garlic, parsley, dill, collards, Pumpkins (4or5 types), Squash (3 types), zucchini (3types), watermelon, and honey dew melons. There will be something that I have forgotten so I will apologise to all the plants that I have forgotten and just say that I appreciate their contribution to the gardens diversity and ultimate sustainability!

Mulberrys aren’t far away either just think jam, pies, icecream........and then there will be figs, its almost too much to think about."