Meat

Meat!

August 7, 2024 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We did a lot of butchering in June. The first weekend, while more than half the family were in Dunedin, a neighbor gave us a deer. Those of us who were at home got it boned out and minced, and then I made it all into hamburger patties.

A couple of weeks later, Simon killed a deer, and we made that one into mince, and froze it for later use.

We also got some nice pieces of backstrap from it.

The last weekend of the month we killed a beef heifer we raised for almost two years. She was the biggest beast we’ve ever processed ourselves, and when we weighed all the packages of meat while we were putting them in the freezer, we calculated that the hanging weight would have been about 275 kg (over 600 pounds). This was the quarters hanging in the carport, where they stayed for two days before we broke them down.

We made everything possible into roasts and steaks, and turned the trim into sausages.

The kitchen was a very busy, messy place that evening!

A few days later, I cut up the steaks, which we had put in the fridge in big bags, and the children helped to get them wrapped.

After a month, my hand has finally recovered from all that knife work!

Pork!

October 2, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, a friend called us to say that someone had a lot of wild pigs that had been killed in a competition, and they were available for anyone who came to get them. Elijah drove the 15 minutes to pick up three for us and two for another friend. We won’t turn down free meat! We got ours skinned that night.

The next day, Esther and I spent the morning boning them out. Wild pork has a rather gamy flavor, so I wanted to make most of the meat into sausage. We saved two legs for ham, and threw away one entire pig because it smelled so strong we couldn’t stand it. We ended up with 70 pounds of meat to make into sausage! She put it through the mincer, and then we weighed the meat and mixed in the seasonings. Then, she put it through the mincer again.

After Gayle and Elijah got home, we stuffed the sausage into casings.

Miss Joy had a great time helping to package the sausages!

Now, we’re enjoying (only slightly gamy) delicious pork sausages!

Finally!

April 10, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Warning: If you have problems with hunting or eating meat, stop right here! There are details you may not want to read or see.

When Simon was about seven, and James was about three (maybe eight and four–I’m not sure), the two of them and a cousin who was in between their ages, who lived on our property, disappeared one afternoon in November. This was in Michigan, and in Michigan, the last two weeks of November are Deer Season. (Maybe that should be in all-caps; it is that important to a lot of people, and the first day is nearly a state holiday!) People who are not hunting stay out of the woods and near buildings during that time, lest there might be stray shots. It can be dangerous to be walking around in the woods or fields during that time. Anyway, these three children disappeared. When someone realized they were missing, both families started searching. By the time we had been looking for 45 minutes, my sister-in-law was about ready to call the police–and then they showed up. They had been out hunting deer behind the woods at the back corner of our 40 acres, over a quarter of a mile from the houses! They were armed with a baseball bat and a stick, and Simon apparently fully expected to bring down a deer. They were totally unafraid, with no idea of the danger that the adults knew about!

Ever since that time, Simon has dreamed of killing a deer. He would love to live off the land, with a hunter-gatherer type of lifestyle. He has gone on hunts with friends half a dozen times since we moved over here, and never saw a deer when anyone in the group had a gun that could bring one down. This week, he went hunting twice with a friend who moved to the area a few months ago and who, importantly, possesses a gun license and a deer rifle. They went out in the middle of the afternoon the second time and searched for likely places to see a deer. After several hours, an hour or so after dark, they gave up and started out, and finally got a possum for their pains. Then they continued on down the road–and saw a deer in the middle of the road! It took a couple of minutes for Simon’s friend to get his gun loaded again, and Simon kept the spotlight on the deer. The first shot only wounded it (they hadn’t realized the gun wasn’t sighted in properly), so Simon took off up the river, following it. He soon caught up and delivered the killing shot. Then, he got to pack it out of there to the car (probably a good thing he had so much adrenalin in his system–it was heavy!) Finally, his dream of bagging a deer came true.

Mr. Imagination was along, since I had gone to town that day, leaving him with Simon, and no one was home to keep track of him. He was over the moon to be a part of this experience.

I love the grin on Simon’s face! The second picture is the Daihatsu–the gutless car that is often scoffed at, but which can go almost anywhere.

Simon brought the deer home and hung it in our carport. The next evening, Little Miss helped him skin it, and then he and Gayle brought it into the kitchen where we boned it out. The friend he went with, and his wife, stopped in while we were working, and he was excited to see that part of the process. The next day, they came back, after we had minced all the meat, and helped turn some into sausage and package it all. We got 34 kg of mince and 5 kg of backstrap from that deer! (That’s about 86 pounds.) It was a young stag, so quite tender and tasty. We had venison sausage patties with breakfast, venison hamburger patties for lunch, and backstrap for dinner. The boys were delighted to get to eat all that meat! Now, Simon wants to go hunting even more.

Half of the bones are cooking in a big pot right now, to make bone broth, and the other half are in the freezer waiting. There was very little waste from this animal, something that makes me feel good about them killing it.

September 2021 Photos

October 17, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I think I should be taking more pictures! I’m running out of fodder for posts. It doesn’t help that my camera doesn’t work very well, so I forget to take it along when we go places. Mr. Sweetie let me use his last week when we did a fun science experiment, and I got a good video of what we did…and then he deleted it without thinking. Sigh. Anyway, here are the rest of what we took in September.

This is Mr. Imagination with his pet budgie, Tammie (short for Tamarillo). The budgie isn’t very tame, but he keeps working on it.

We killed a beef and dressed it out ourselves, for the first time! That was pretty exciting. We had never done an animal bigger than a sheep before. We got a friend to kill the animal, and the boys and Gayle got it skinned and gutted. We hung it here, in the woodshed, for a few days, wrapped in clean, old sheets to keep flies off. As soon as I could get to it after the weekend, I found videos on YouTube about boning out quarters of beef, and went back and forth, watching a bit, then doing that step. It wasn’t too hard. Gayle boned out one back quarter, but I mostly did the other three. I wouldn’t mind doing this job again.

This was the pile of steaks. Yum! This is some of the tastiest, most tender beef we’ve ever eaten.

The day I finished putting the beef in the freezers, Elijah brought home four deer legs! We decided to make venison sausage. The whole family got into it, and Gayle got to share his expertise in linking sausages. He did that for many years at his last job. These sausages are delicious!

Elijah got to lay the carpet in the tiny house. It looks good! Mr. Diligence and Mr. Sweetie now sleep in there. We have two sets of bunkbeds now in that house, and can sleep five people in there when we have company (the boys move to the container then). I need to get some pictures of it now that it’s finished.

She’s licking out the pavlova from the mixer!

Sitting in a dishpan to suck her thumb!

Reading to her baby.

This is a craft project we did for our study of England. These are guards at Buckingham Palace, made from clothespins.

The boys’ old sleepout, which is slated for demolition. They are enjoying having more space.

How to Cut up a Chicken

January 24, 2014 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Warning: If you don’t like pictures of raw meat, stop right here! You have been warned. This post is not for the squeamish. It is for people who like to start from scratch when making their food.

We hatched about 30 chicks in September–or rather, four of our hens did the hard work of keeping the eggs warm and hatching the chicks! Fifteen turned out to be roosters, and only one was wanted for future breeding. The rest were big enough by now to eat, and I didn’t want to move them to the new place, so we butchered them today. As I was cutting them up, I thought this would make a good post–maybe someone else wants to know how to cut up a chicken!

Start with a SHARP knife. Keep a steel close to keep a good edge on it. This is what will make or break your experience. I also like to have a wooden cutting board (anything else will dull your knife faster), and kitchen shears if I am splitting any breasts.

Lay the chicken on its back, and cut around the wings, pulling the joint loose as you do.

I like to fold the wing tip back over the first joint. When you oven-fry it, then, it won’t burn as easily.

Next step–cut off the legs. Pull the leg away from the body and cut through the loose skin between leg and body.

Continue cutting around the thigh, as close to the bone as possible.

As you cut, pull the leg back so the joint comes apart, and cut through the cartilage that holds it together.

I separate the drumstick and thigh. There is a line of fat that goes across; cut through just on the drumstick side of that line and you’ll go right through the joint. You can also wiggle the joint to figure out where it is.

Now, I separate the back from the breast. Stick the point of the knife in where the wing was cut out, and cut toward the back end of the chicken.

If you look closely, you should be able to see a line of white dots, where the upper ribs meet the lower ribs. Those white dots are the cartilage that joins the two parts of the ribs, and it is easy to cut between them there (saves your knife, too–hitting bone dulls a knife fast).

Next, grasp each part of the chicken firmly (you’ll be glad, here, if you were able to cut through the cartilage–otherwise there will be sharp bones) and pull the carcase apart, twisting and ripping.

To split the breast in half, and have bone-in, skin-on breast pieces, take your sharp kitchen shears and cut through the breast bone and the wishbone. The breastbone is what I am cutting through here; the wishbone is lower. I cut through each separately.

After you’ve broken the bones with the shears, use your knife to cut the meat away from one side of the keel bone, and separate the two halves of the breast.

To make boneless skinless breast, pull the skin off the meat. Then, cut along both sides of the keel bone, and down along each side of the wish bone. Here, I’ve cut along one side of the keel bone and the point of the knife is at the point of the wishbone.

Here, I’ve cut the meat away from the keel bone and the wishbone, and am boning the meat away from the bones about halfway back.

Once you’ve boned it about halfway back with your knife, finish pulling the meat off with your hands.

Here are all the pieces of a chicken! Clockwise from top: Drumsticks, thighs, wings, back and breast bones, boneless skinless breast.

What I ended up with, from 14 chickens: A big pot of bones to turn into broth, a bowl of boneless skinless breast, and a bowlful of other pieces.

After packaging: A tray of breast meat to freeze individually, then bag, and five meal’s worth of pieces. After I laid out the breast pieces, I remember that they need to be aged, so I put them in a bag and will lay them out again in three days. We always keep our chicken in the fridge for three days before freezing, so it is more tender.

As I was working, this little monkey jumped onto my back and held on!