So despite soap making plans, today was a day of butchering. We had been planning for some time to get rid of excess male presence and energy in the flock (both amongst the chickens and the muscovite ducks). Today we finally went ahead and did it. We also slaughtered one hen that was showing signs of illness … we had been monitoring her for a few days and she wasn’t getting any better … so to we culled her (as food for the dogs). Then we went ahead and butchered one of our two roosters … I thought he would be harder to catch (he was very aggressive) but it turned out he is more bark then bite. Then we went on to slaughter two of the male Muscovites. I did the killing and Andreea did the cleaning and hacking.
The ducks were much harder to handle then the chickens. They are really strong and strike out with their short feet like crazy. They also took much longer then the chickens to die. The first one managed to get free from Andreea’s grip … splashing the bowl of blood mostly on Andreea and a bit on me. Andreea looked like a character out of a Rambo movie. We got a much better hold of the second one (Andreea his body and I his head) and managed to create a much calmer experience for everyone. The duck feathers were also much more difficult to remove … at one point Andreea gave up and skinned them … removing skin and feather leftovers together.
We cooked a chicken soup for the dogs with the hen-parts. We cooked an amazing chicken soup for ourselves. Despite my vegetarianism I make it a point to taste from the meat of every animal I participate in butchering. However the Muscovite meat that we baked in the oven was a rare treat and I had a decent helping of meat … my first in a long time (at least 12 years).
It was interesting to feel killing in my gut … not as an emotional or physical sensation … I was completely at peace doing the killing. It was an experience of energy … of taking a life.
All of the water heating and cooking took place on the outside twin-rocket stove we re-assembled this morning. Summer is here. It was great fun being outside almost all day and feeding the rocket stove as work was coming along.
In the early afternoon hours two tractors appeared and finally laid the 2nd layer of gravel (on top of the first layer of larger stones that we put in last year) on the last 200m+ of road that lead to our property.
Sabine and Ina have been with us for the past few days … in the background of the day Ina baked a fantastic bread. So we just came in from a late night snack of fresh bread and jams while watching a fantastic thunderstorm (my first one … so up close and personal).