PORK.

Our entire house smells like bacon. We spent two days rendering lard - ending up with almost 2 gallons. There is a gigantic ham hanging underneath the stairs, and we've got four huge slabs of bacon curing in a couple of makeshift salt boxes (bee hive supers) by the back door where it stays cool. We have been eating sausage, chops, shoulder, or some other such pork product almost every day for the past two months. It is hard work and emotionally difficult, but this kind of abundance is why we raise pigs. They helped us to better our land, and now they are nourishing our family. Thank you, pigs.- Hannah.(For more of our thoughts on eating animals, check out this post.)

A SPECIAL THANKS.

It's dark and it's raining. Not hard, just obnoxiously––the kind of rain that seeks, that comes up from underneath, drifts sideways and finds your dry spots no matter how well covered they are. And for a bonus, the rain has made the ground around the house slick and muddy and ideal for handling turkeys.The turkeys are roosted by this point, so its easy enough to sneak up on them in the dark to load them into the truck. They kick and flail when we catch them, throwing mud and wetness about wildly, but everyone makes it in unharmed. Not thrilled, but unharmed.It feels good to have them loaded, and sad. And the next day it feels good to hand them one by one to the processor, and sad. It feels good and sad to raise an animal strictly to kill it, then good and sad to eat it. But that's what farming is and we are always thankful when we can feel both good and sad about an animal we eat. Because it's a lot of hard work, from start to muddy finish, but it's nothing in comparison to what they do for us.As difficult as they were this year, we are thankful for how much the turkeys challenged us, how much more they taught us about farming. Hannah and I are thankful these birds will be a part of so many good dinners, and appreciated by so many wonderful people. Thankful for our own bird, in the oven as I write this. Then when dinner is over, and leftovers exhausted, we will be thankful for how much richer the turkeys made our farm, and the strength and energy they give us to continue working on making it, our community and world a healthier place. Our thankfulness will not just be spoken at dinner then, but demonstrated in our actions throughout our lives. So thank you, Turkeys, we will do our best to never stop giving you thanks.- Jesse.

COOKING WITH STEW HENS AND ROOSTERS.

Culling ("removing animals from the herd") is part of raising chickens. It's not fun, but if you want to keep a healthy and affordable flock, it's a necessity. Sometimes it's an old hen who is no longer laying eggs (but is still eating feed). Sometimes it's one (or EIGHT) too many roosters, or even an aggressive rooster. Now, these birds are not like the chicken you get at the store. They're often fattier, with less meat on them, but tasty nonetheless. This week, it was a rooster that had to go (not as fatty as stew hens usually), but he didn't go to waste. The offal went to Wendell and the meat went into a soup. If you don't keep chickens, ask your farmer for a stew hen or rooster. I'm sure they will happily oblige.CULL CHICKEN SOUP RECIPE(makes 1/2 gallon of stock, 1/2 gallon of soup––serves four)Cook time: the longer the better (at least four hours)1 whole cull chicken cleaned3-4 medium size carrots, large diced2 medium size onions, large diced1/2 large bulb fennel, large diced4 quarts of veg stock or waterHerbs in bouquet garnis (recommended: thyme, bay leaf, rosemary)2 cups wine (optional)Mushrooms (optional)1/2 lbs of Pasta (penne is our favorite) or 1 lbs of potatoes (chopped)2 cloves garlic (chopped)Olive oilSea SaltGround pepperPut a large pot on medium heat, add 2 tablespoons of olive oil or lard. Once hot, sear the whole chicken until light gold on each side then remove whole chicken with tongs and set on plate. Add onions to pan and stir and cook until translucent. Then add fennel and carrots and stir and cook until all veggies are soft. Add whole chicken back in, then if you are going to add wine, add it now. Once the smell of alcohol has boiled off, about one or two minutes, add stock until chicken is covered. Place on lid and let simmer for several hours. Often, we'll cook the soup over the course of a whole day. If using a fatty stew hen, you may need to skim off some of the fat collecting on the surface. A little is OK. Before you add potatoes, and before you take the meat off the chicken bones, but after several hours of cooking, remove half the soup and freeze for chicken broth for another day (we always try and cook for at least two meals, or in this case, a possible sick day). Add potatoes two hours before serving, or pasta thirty minutes before. Add herbs and garlic an hour before serving.When serving, carefully remove chicken and herbs. Meat should fall off bone easily, and stir meat back into soup, leaving the carcass out. Serve warm when potatoes or pasta is soft but not mush. Enjoy!- Jesse.

BOW AND ARROW.

A friend recently (and generously) lent me a bow and some arrows when he heard I was interested in learning to bow hunt. And then, hilarity ensued. At first I couldn't pull the thing back—being that it was a powerful compound bow—so I had to spend a couple weeks building the muscle. Then, when I finally got to the point where I could draw it back—notably after I learned how to loosen the tension—I started to practice.Practice, however, is a generous term. In reality, I would shoot the arrows approximately nowhere close to the box I'd set up, and then spend the next twenty minutes searching the woods for them. But after a few days I started to hit the box. Then I started to hit the target. Then I started to hit it from further and further away. Suddenly, this instrument which bordered on being a silly toy in my hands when I first picked it up, was becoming a weapon. And as I became more and more accurate—a deadly weapon.The thing is, I want to learn to hunt. Or more specifically, I want to experience the act of hunting. I want to feel what our ancestors felt. I want to feel the nerves and the pain and don't want it to be easy—thus the bow. A gun gives you quite a bit of range (ten times the range in some cases). With a bow, you have to get within forty yards or so if you want a good chance at hitting your target. You have to be quiet, camouflaged, calm. Deer are not stupid, or rather deer have evolved to evade, out run, and outsmart close-range hunters. I want that challenge.However, since I don't feel that simply wanting to "experience" something is necessarily a justification for doing it, I also want to learn to hunt because Hannah and I want the meat. We don't raise any meat animals of our own yet and know this winter we're going to want to have some around. So, I borrowed a bow and arrow, figured out how to shoot it, and soon will start hunting.All I've hit is a box, and I know I have a considerably long way to go before dinner is served. Apologies to our vegetarian followers, but expect a few more posts this winter about my adventures learning to hunt, clean and cook venison––well, hunt definitely, clean and cook, hopefully.- Jesse.