Who wants to be a farmer???

I've just written a post over on the Dawson Valley Free Range Blog about an exciting opportunity for a young person to be involved with our growing business. I won't re-write it all here, just pop over to Dawson Valley Free Range or our other internship website to find out more information.

Over the last couple of months I have been feeling quite overwhelmed with our lifestyle. I sometimes think that we just work so hard and seem to get no where! I had a little health scare last week and realised that my health is being affected by my stress levels. Last Sunday I decided to make some changes. Part of this decision was based on the fact that I bought a stack of vegetable seedlings - I was forced into spending some time in the garden or else I would've wasted my money. Well, it paid off! Not only did I get my garden weeded and every available space planted, I ended up being far more productive in the office.

Some plants survived the summer - this bed is a mix of old and new plantings.

The moral of this story is that I need to make time to do the things that I really enjoy doing and hopefully this will ensure that my stress levels don't get to being unmanageable. And if I'm more productive then it's a win/win all around.

So, a week later and having just spent a busy but relaxing and enjoyable weekend with our eldest son and his partner I am feeling great about life on the farm. I love farming and I really don't want to do anything else. I feel very lucky to have the lifestyle that we have, especially being able to send Benjamin off with eskies full of meat and milk. We made strawberry jam, killed and processed 6 roosters and 3 ducks, did some cattle work, managed to keep all the pigs feed and still relaxed and had family time.

Healthy farming is also about keeping the Farmer healthy! We need to keep our life in balance - all work is not good, and my goal now is to keep that balance.

Some of the roosters were a little old so we minced them - originally we planned to make sausages, but ran out of time.......I think minced chicken will be great!

The bones went into the stock pot to make a big batch of chicken bone broth. This will be handy this week, as Kim is coming down with a cold! 

The remaining chickens must have been a bit worried with the slaughter yesterday - they've gone from a couple of eggs a day to 10 today! 

Farm Butchering Day

We haven't killed a beast for ourselves for a long time. We usually have some left over from the markets so we don't really need to do it ourselves. However, we've had a dexter steer that we were given by some friends. They didn't know what to do with him and didn't want to eat him themselves, so they thought that we may be able to put him through the markets. Well.....he was quite a bit older than he looked and we weren't really sure how old, and to top it off he was cut proud. This is a term used when the castration wasn't successfully done and they are a kind of bull. We had no idea what he would taste like, so we decided to do him ourselves and if he was too tough we could just cut all up for dog food. And....Edmund wants to learn how to kill and cut up a beast, so we thought we'd do it.

After two weeks hanging in our coldroom - today was the day. We cooked up a bit of topside, which we use for steak, but most people don't! It was tasty and tender, so after a sigh of relief we got into it.

Ah.....to have steak again! We never have that left over from the markets! This is the rib fillet and it's quite a small steak, obviously because he was a small animal.

As we were doing it ourselves, we could play around and try some different things.

Bone in Shoulder and Bone in Brisket. Meat cooked on the bone is so much tastier! We also kept one of the shin pieces as a whole piece with the bone in......think osso bucco uncut!

These Mini Roasts were Edmund's idea - one is garlic and herb and the other is Moroccan flavoured.

We did mince and sausages. 

To give an example of how small this fella was, a few weeks ago we helped cut up a bullock of Kim's brothers. We did 65kg of sausages. Today we did 15kg's of sausages. We like plain and simple, so we did herb, garlic and chilli and some of Brad's homemade wine.

I like to mix the seasonings into the meat before we mince. I add the liquid after we mince (in this case it was wine, but often it's water) and before we fill the skins.

I only learnt how to tie sausages a few weeks ago helping out west, so mine are a bit uneven.

Our tradition on butchering day is to have rib bones for lunch, usually this follows a breakfast of offal, but we had the liver and bacon, heart and curly gut two weeks ago when we killed the steer. Today we had topside steak and eggs for breakfast. The rib bones I cooked in the oven with some herbs and a bit of sauce over the top. We also had mince patties, which was the mince left in the mincer after we finished the sausages (you can't get all that out). So a very meat filled day......Vegie soup is what we are going to have for tea!

Oh and you may be wondering what curly gut is - it's what it sounds like, the intestines! Kim gives them a very good clean out and then we cut them into small bits and fry until very crispy(think pork crackling).

On a final note. I have just started a Facebook page called Lucy's Kitchen. If you like hearing about food and what I cook on a daily basis, you may like to follow it. Hopefully this link  will work, otherwise search for Lucy's Kitchen - there is a few of them! Mine has sausages as the background photo!