Cria, Steel Roof, Local Food Potluck

A lot has happened here since my last post. First, and most excitingly, our cria was born. She arrived on  August 31st at about 10am. Beth had checked on Ivanka (mum) at 9:30am and didn't witness anything abnormal. When she checked again at around 10:30am the cria was out, standing, and still wet. When the animals birth like that it's a lot less stressful than being there for the whole thing and trying to "help". The cria, still unnamed, is doing really well. She runs around the pastures every evening and once she reaches a certain speed she prances along with all four legs bounding simultaneously, like a reindeer. It's fun to watch her run circles around everyone else. The lambs are growing out of their playful stage already so the cria plays by herself. It's really cute. I forgot to take pictures of her when newly born, but I did take a short video. Until about a week old she had one ear that was sort of flipped inside-out. I put some tape on it to train it into position and now it's fine.

 And a picture from yesterday. She's growing quickly, which is no surprise as just about every time I see her she's nursing.

Last weekend Laura and Craig came over to help out with the steel roofing over the deck. In about 5 hours we got it all up and the next day I did the flashing and ridge cap. 

Done! I'm so glad to be finished this project. It only took from May till now! We'll be enjoying some shade next summer finally. With the gates up and railings all done too, the whole deck serves as a playpen for Ella. 

 This past Sunday we hosted a local food potluck. Back in May we challenged all our friends to try to grow/raise/hunt/fish something over the summer to bring to our place later in September. People were up for the challenge and 57 people came over. We had a fantastic meal with dishes like: Slate River Valley squash, Dexter beef curry, Grouse pot-pie with king bollette mushrooms, a roast Townline Farm chicken, venison stew, tomato soup, Nym Lake pickerel, cabbage coleslaw, Ham in birch syrup etc etc. It was a great dinner, enjoyed by all I think. Later, we played some games including and egg on the spoon race, potato sack race and a hay bale toss. Beth and I were so busy on the day that we forgot to take pictures but Paul got a couple snaps from the potato sack race. It was a lot of fun and we were happy the weather cleared and became nice on the day.

And finally, a snap of the potato crop. Given that the potatoes sole purpose this year was to help in establishing a new garden plot we were happy with the yield. We got about 40 lbs of spuds in a few varieites: Yukon Gold, Russets and Fingerlings.  

Freezer Bound Chickens

 On August 24th, the broilers made their way to the deep freeze, with some help from Paul and I.
They had reached the ripe old age of 10 weeks and were huge!

It's hard to see from these pictures but these birds, guts all in, weigh about 12-15lbs.

Here's the makeshift abattoir.  I made some "killing cones" out of plastic buckets. These are meant to calm and restrain the chicken while it's being killed. It's not an easy thing to do by any stretch but you do get used to it after a few birds. The cones keep the bird upside down, which calms it, and once their throat has been severed they bleed out quickly.

From the cone the bird is immersed in a 180 degree pot to loosen the feathers for plucking. I don't have a photo of the plucker in action but it is something to see!

Paul's job was to eviscerate the birds. After watching a few videos on YouTube we felt we were educated and ready. Over the course of the day Paul got so fast at this that I couldn't keep up. To make use to his time, and because I had ripped the skin of one bird so badly in the plucker, Paul butchered one of the chickens completely. He did a great job of it and butchering is definitely the way to go if there are enough hands. 

In the end, we processed 27 birds in about four hours. Next time we'll be much faster I'm sure.
The freezer is so full now I wonder if filling a deer tag would be necessary this fall.

Following the chicken processing I raked up the wood chips and put down a bunch of lime over the area which neutralized the top layer of chicken-innards-sodden soil. There wasn't any time for a smell to develop so it's like it never happened. 

On another note, we are inundated with these green squash! We've named them 'Kuiper squash' and though they are tasty we've got too many. We gave Paul a few to use this winter with his dogsledding guests and we've processed loads of them. 

The roof over the deck is coming along. I started this project in May with my dad and have had little time to work on it since. When Beth and Ella went to S. Ontario for ten days recently I got it to this point; rafters done, strapping on, angled bracing up, railings up, gates on. Now I just need to convince a couple friends to come over to help put on the steel roofing.