Today I cooked a wonderful lunch. Roast veggies, yellow potatoes from the grocery store, red potatoes from Darlene, beetroot from Salle, garlic from China (boo), carrots and onions from heavens knows where. Then deer steak, browned on the cast iron griddle then finished in the oven. Well, I enjoyed it. Opened a jar each of French cut green beans and squash cubes that I mashed with butter. Finished with some of the coconut filled chocolate Bundt cake I made yesterday. To my mind it looked great, but didn't quite live up to that in taste. Have been thinking how I'll make the next one :). Make marshmallow fluff, add the coconut for the filling, and make the cake chocolate-ier by adding some coffee. Also needs to be darker, so will play around with the flour / cocoa ratio.
Tomorrow is the start of my annual butchering endeavours. Have the 5 roosters and one drake in the horse trailer. Gave them some grain this morning, but otherwise they just have clean water. Have to move the plucker, hot plate and stainless steel table up from the lower barn tomorrow as I don't have running cold water down there. Amy, our Monday herd-share owner wants to see the chicken plucker in action, although she's a seasoned chicken killer too, so I'll text her once the plucking part is about ready. She wants to rent the plucker, but I'm not keen to let the $1,000 equipment off the farm. We've only used it a few times, and I had to already replace the plastic water fittings with brass ones. These things always tend to break when they're borrowed, don't they ? I'm OK with her bringing her chickens here to just pop them into the plucker, but I suppose that's a schlepp for her - lugging dead chickens around.
Texted Daron about the sheep as I haven't heard from him since he married last month. We previously discussed 1/2 a pig for bacon, ham and sausage in trade for one of the sheep, and I'm gearing for butchering so need to know what I'm working with. Bill the barber was here in one of his deer stands last night, says there were 2 does under him but he didn't shoot them. Think he just wanted to get away from home for a while. They're packing to return to Florida, so I don't think I'm getting a deer from him this year. Without him, we'd have to take it in to a processing plant to process, then will need to buy a tag as otherwise it's seen as poaching. I don't understand how one can stand accused of poaching deer from your own land, but seemingly that's how it works. I think I can process it myself. It may not be that pretty, but I'll mainly be mincing it into hamburger, except for some whole muscles, including the tenderloin, for biltong. Think we should aim for about 3. Maybe my brother-in-law will come and shoot some for me. Then again, maybe I can go shoot one myself. Then again, don't think my aim is that good, so maybe not. Don't want to just wound one.