Sheep for Milk?

I have been wondering about getting some sheep for milk production. Yes we have a farm within walking distance where we can get fresh cows' milk but it's not organic (nor is it sustainable). We could get a cow ourselves though apparently the paperwork involved in France is horrendous for cattle - just one or a thousand, same amount of paperwork. Plus we'd probably be swamped with milk. Then there's the goats but at the moment that's a disaster and their milk is naturally homogenised (the fat is naturally distrubuted through the milk, unlike most cows' milk these days that has been UNnaturally homogenised for commercial reasons) so making butter is nigh on impossible. Sheep however have milk that is very high in fat content and therefore is very good for making butter, cheese and ice-cream.



I'm researching. I quite like these Zwartbles, nice compliments to our little Ouessants.

Blizzards

Well we have had blizzard conditions since 10am this morning (it's now past 2pm) and the snow is indeed quite deep. I have just been out to do 'house check' on the animals and first call was the goats. And there was poor Granny standing in a very 'bright' house - bright because part of the roof has blown off! Fortunately I think it had happened fairly recently because there wasn't much snow on the blown off panel. The other 3 goats had obviously been spooked because they had moved over to their new-under-construction house despite it still being a bit airy around the walls as the pallet gaps haven't yet been filled in. Ben has now gone out in the blizzard to re-roof and I'm in cosy next to the fire doing 'home education' with the boys - we're learning about armadillos of all things.

Great Gates

We are so very grateful (or is that 'gateful'?) to Jack, Jason and Korey, 3 of our WWOOFers who designed and made this gate for us. It has radically altered how we use our land as before the gate, we didn't use this long field on the east of our house because it was a long way round to get to it through two other fields. Now however, we have been able to relocate the goats into this field, site their house just to the left of it and have easy access. It is just SO much more convenient. Thank you guys.

Trees- What's in a Name?

We have a fair few trees on this property (sadly not as many as I'd like but we're working to rectify that). However, I have to confess that it's a steep learning curve for me to learn to identify them all and their uses. For instance, here are two Birch trees. They're obviously two differing species but up until now they have both just been 'birch' to me.

I have been aided by my trusty arborists bible "Trees" and this fantastic website http://www.2020site.org/trees/

And then there's another useful piece of information on the following website that gives lots of common trees and their names in english, french, german, dutch and its botanical latin name.
http://www.woodworking.co.uk/Technical/Trees/trees.html
This has proved very useful to me in sourcing more trees and in gaining the help of my farming neighbour when I need to know more about them.

Meat Processing Factory

Thank goodness. I have finally finished processing all the pork that needed processing. Some is in the freezer and that's fine. Some is in the brine and that's fine. But the pate needed to be mixed and cooked and that took ages because I only have 6 pate dishes and I had about 5kgs to cook. I had to cook some, weight it down, let it cool and set, freeze it, de-container it, freeze it and then start again with the next 6 pots. I'll need to get sharper eyes at the brocantes to find some more pots before the next lot needs done.

It was necessary to sort out the flair fat (the hard fat for making lard) and the soft fat before rendering. The photographs show the sorted fat before and after rendering in the oven. Note the difference in colour of the fat once rendered - the finer fat (the flair fat) is much lighter in colour. Post script - next time I won't render it in the oven as it took on a golden colour and tasted 'roasted' not neutral as it should.

I mentioned that some of the sausage mix was being left for me to add some more ingredients which I did. However, when it came to making the actual sausages, the gismo that I have for making them was untried and pathetic to say the least so the finished article was disasterous. So disasterous that I squeezed the mixture back out of the skins and put it in the freezer until I can get a proper machine, albeit a hand-cranked one so as to be sustainable. We did however have sausages for tea and the photograph shows the first meal we had from our very own grown pork (and our own potatoes!)

The rillettes was a tasty success but it took 6 hours to cook down the meat, 2 hours of both Ben and I lovingly sifting the mixture through our fingers to ensure no bone fragments nor 'undesirable' bits went into the finished product, then a further hour to sterilise the 19 filled jars for storage. Here you can see the pate and the rillettes as finished product (plus jars of my own chutney)

And the photo not for the faint-hearted, is the process of making the Fromage de Tete. A surprising amount of good meat comes off the head but the trotters were another matter. A teaspoon of meat from each! I think their main purpose is to add gelatine for the setting of the brawn. I found lots of recipes for cooking trotters though how anyone would want to eat just chunks of fat off the bone I'll never know - not my thing for sure.

No Plough Grain Sowing

For those of you that have been following this blog, you'll know that I agonised for ages as to whether or not to plough more land for cropping this year (see this post). I decided not to.


On 29th October, Jason, Korey and I found ourselves suitable bags and got ready to load up with seed. Jason got accosted by children before going out and had to carry S around for a while. We over-sowed by hand almost an acre of meadow with wheat grain. It was a fun job that took us about 2 hours on a pleasant Friday morning. We all laughed as we were doing it and wondered if we were mad but now I'm happy to report that the grains are coming up strong though perhaps a little patchy. I hope that they have got their roots down into the ground as we are due some frost by the weekend. Fingers crossed.

Winter Sunshine

I just love winter sunshine. It gladens the heart after long, dreary, cloudy and rainy days - not that we have so many of these now that we live here rather than Scotland. It floods into the house because it's at a lower level in the sky and reaches every nook and cranny. But that there is also the downside. It shows up all the dust, fingermarks, grub on the floor, dirty windows and suchlike so that I feel quite embarrased. I have therefore today cleaned all the windows, scrubbed the floor, and cleaned off all the fingermarks from the cupboards. Most of the spiders' webs were allowed to stay as without them they don't survive and they're good fly-catchers. Goodness only knows how long it will stay sparklingly clean with three young lads living here and a farm to run but it looks good now.