Thanksgiving week

Well, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since I last updated this blog, so bear with me. I have several items to talk about today. First, I finally did get some photos to share, I didn't want to write another update until I had some pictures, I hate reading blogs when there aren't any pictures. The pigs are growing fast. I haven't weighed them, but I am pretty sure they are well over 100 lb by now.




I now have four pigs as I bought a Large Black hog, female, a few weeks ago for breeding with the black and white boar. I understand that it is better to wait until she gets full size before allowing her to breed, but I don't think I will be able to do that, as that involves building a completely separate enclosure complete with housing, feeder, waterer and electric fence just for him, so I guess she will just have to deal with it as it comes.

Here they are at the feeder I built.  I don't talk to them any more, as they will shortly be invited to dinner.  You can see the insulators for the electric fence I installed a few weeks ago.  That has saved me from lots of anxiety as the pigs figured out how easy it is to get out.  The electric fence has convinced them that they don't want to try.

  





This is what they looked like just a few weeks ago.

 The chickens are doing okay, but I am still only getting one or two eggs per day. I finally did decide to butcher one of the roosters on Saturday, as my sons were home for the weekend, so they helped me catch one of the black ones, and I had the opportunity to learn by doing, as I have not done this before. I read about the technique in my Storey's guide to chickens, but this was the first time I have done it, and I have not seen it done before.




Here's the black rooster head down in the "Cone of Death."

  I had purchased a "Chicken executor" at a flea market last summer, so now is my chance to try it out. The rooster was upside down in the cone, and his head is supposed to be sticking out the bottom.




As you can see, his head is not sticking out the bottom of the cone, like it is supposed to.  He had pulled his head up inside the cone.  All I see is rooster comb.

  So, I ended up having to reach up inside the cone and grabbing his head and pulling it down and out of the cone in order to do the job. I will refrain from going into gory detail at this point, but let's just say that the rooster lost a lot of blood and then he was dead. The next job was the plucking. I had put a big pot of water on the stove to boil, so I got the water, as it was nearly boiling, and dumped it into a big enamel bucket, hoping that there would be enough room for the whole rooster, less his head, as that was gone now. After a bit of swishing around and turning over a couple times, the feathers started to come loose. Now, I had forgotten some of the instructions from Storey's guide, so we left the rooster in the water as we plucked, which was a mistake, as he got partially cooked, but at least all the feathers came off.



The rooster is being undressed, so to speak.

 I did have enough presence of mind to take it out of the hot water partway through the plucking process, so it didn't get boiled completely, but it did get pretty stiff. Once the plucking was done, came the gutting. It did turn out to be a bit of a struggle to get inside the bird, but once I was in there everything came out pretty well. I ended up removing the neck, as I needed to get the crop and upper parts out. All the inedible parts went over the back fence, along with the feet and feathers. What was left looked pretty close to what you see in the grocery store. I weighed the chicken on the kitchen scale, and it weighed about 5 and 3/4 lb. So, a good-size family chicken for dinner.



The Mighty Hunters, having captured and killed the dangerous and wily chicken.  Me, on the left, and my youngest son, Adam, on the right.  He is the only one who is brave enough to help out with this stuff.  He is also the one who helped me castrate the pig last time he was home.

 On to Thanksgiving dinner! I wanted to cook the turkey in the wood cook stove this year, as this is the first year in the new house, so I put the turkey in an oven bag so that it would stay nice and moist, and popped it in the oven. It was supposed to cook 4 1/2 hours at 325 degrees, so I got it in the oven at about 8:30 a.m. with the idea of being ready for dinner by about 1 p.m. We had waffles from the wood stove for breakfast, so that helped to get the oven hot.



Lots of oil is the key here.  Spray vegetable oil on the hot waffle iron and about 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in the waffle mix.  I learned from last time that one scoop (ladle full) of batter is enough to fill the iron.  The first attempt ended quickly when the batter ran over the sides and onto the stove.  When it is smoking hot on both sides, it's ready.  I removed the stove lid under the waffle iron in order for it to get hot enough, so it is directly over the flames.



Since the turkey was in the wood stove oven, I used the electric stove oven to cook the pies. I made home made apple pie, pecan pie and pumpkin pie. The pumpkin was from last year, as we did not use it all last year, and I could not in good conscience throw it out. It was in the deep freezer, and still good. I thawed it out and then put it in a cotton bag (one of my t-shirts) and hung it up to drain. I got this idea from my friend, Jim, on his "Wood Cookstove Cooking" blog about how to get tomato pulp to get thick enough without cooking it down on the stove. After a day or two of draining, it was thick enough to use for pie and pumpkin cake without having to cook it down. What a great idea!



The pumpkin pie and the pecan pie are cooling, the apple pie was next in the electric oven.  I also had made a cherry pie, but it really doesn't count, as that came from a can.  I did humble myself and used frozen pie crust.  I know, it isn't as good, but then it sure was easy.  With everything else going on, it made all these pies possible.



Before.




After.

 

The oven bag was burned away on the left side, over the turkey's crop area, as that was the side closest to the firebox. That didn't matter, as there wasn't anything on that side to eat, anyway. It was done just right, the meat was nice and moist, and we had plenty of juices left for gravy.




We all had a wonderful dinner together for Thanksgiving.  Thanks be to God, who always leads us to triumph.  Praise the Lord for his many blessings, and for all the wonderful people we have in our family!  We had our two college kids home on Thursday and two of our older kids with their spouses on Saturday.  Brenda's mom was able to be with us from Thursday through Saturday.