Tuesday, April 10, 2012

A New Start

I keep saying I will get better about blogging, and I keep not doing it. Here is another attempt.

We had an amazing Easter. It was sunny and warm. We started the day with a good old fashioned Easter Egg hunt. We took the dogs and the goats, who love to come on walks with us.

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

It was also the day that we put our Cornish Cross chickens we are raising for meat outside in their new chicken tractor William built. We'd like to raise some duel purpose breeds for meat in the future, but this is our first try raising anything but egg layers, and we just went for what was easy. It is nice to have them out of the house, and they seem quite happy in their new home.

Photobucket

I stopped buying meat at the store a couple years ago when we started raising pigs and the occasional steer. I don't like how animals are usually raised by the meat industry and raising our own animals is our way of dealing with that. However, that meant I was no longer buying chicken. I LOVE eating chicken. We don't do our own slaughter and butchering, and it was really too expensive to pay someone to slaughter chickens, so mostly we just did without. This year we came up with a solution. Some of our good friends are going into it with us, and in exchange for us doing all the raising and feeding, they will be doing the slaughtering and cleaning for us. So now both families will be getting excellent, humanely raised chicken. I'm so excited. I'm already thinking of recipes. In the mean time, it is fun to watch them be chickens.

Photobucket

Photobucket

Usually we have ham for Easter, but I forgot all about thawing one. So instead we had Caramelized onion and mushroom quiche and Rhubarb pie. It was one of the happiest and most content days I have had in ages. A perfect day spent at home with the family.