We’ve been sausage making again.  This time using one pork hand, one slab of pork belly, and all the bit and pieces saved from the butchery day.  Delish.

We also set aside enough sausage meat for the chestnut stuffing for that winter festival thingy, and another lot for sausage rolls.  Homemade sausage rolls are always so much better than shop bought anyway – I think they will be even better with our own pork.. not to mention a certain smug factor.

We put even more sausage meat away in the freezer, as we had only soaked one load of skins. But there are many uses.. burgers.. pork pie… etc. Amazing, turning an unappealing cut of pork (the hand) into yummy foods.

At the weekend, we killed one of the laying hens, and the first of the cockerels from our growers.  Quite a contrast in size!

The growers are sixteen weeks old, so a little young to kill for eating, but the exchequer leghorn cockerels have been mature for some time now, and the three of them hooting away and Alvin our main cockerel answering is too much, and besides they are not a meat breed, it is a waste to pile more food into them, I doubt they will actually get any fatter now.  The copper maran was massive in comparison, and fattier too. She has never been a good layer, and we have killed the two worst layers, to make room for up and coming pullets.

Other hens have had their cards marked – but will have another season to prove themselves, and the other cockerels will go soon.

The two we killed plucked very easily – I don’t know if we were just luck or its a time of year thing. And we cooked them overnight in the rayburn in my  huge roaster (which is this one.. not a bad price either…).

The meat is actually tender, even more so on the old maran.. a factor of long cooking or the breed? And plenty of meat too. So a huge vat of chicken soup in the freezer (I am never going to make space in the freezer at this rate), and breast meat set aside for chicken and leek pie.

We still have one copper headed maran left, and she lays lovely dark eggs, but I might hatch some more next year.

‘Clafoutis’ rates as one of my favourite words.    Other contenders for favourite word are ’serendipity’ and ‘nefarious’. ‘Clafoutis’ is such a lovely sounding name, and very grand for a dessert that is essentially a sweet fruity yorkshire pud.

Today I made a plum clafoutis. I looked at lots of recipes and although we still have eggs coming in, the girls are only giving me about two a day, so I did not like the idea of using lots of eggs or cream, and settled on this recipe which seemed to use a sensible array of ingredients.

The pudding was lovely – crisp and crunchy at the edges, soft and succulent in the middle, sweet and sharp with the plums. Yum.

What to do.. a miserable day, so we went to the reclamation yard.  I love it there.  I just love all those made to last old things – the  cast iron fires, aluminium watering cans, mangles, doors, gothic window frames, granite slabs, foot scrapers.. and so on.

Officially we are table shopping – our dining room is very narrow and our modest table too big for it. No joy today – but oh joy, we shall have to visit more secondhand furniture stores, and reclaim yards another rainy weekend – no hardship!

I do love old worn wooden tables, the patina of use and often they are good solid wood such as oak.  We peered in the window  a modern new furniture store.. but not only do I know like the spanking new glossy thingy.. they want at least three times the price…

Home, and rain again, so we cooked up a big vat (well stock pot) of rogan josh – from shoulder of mutton we boned out and froze earlier in the year. Nine pounds of mutton will make many meals, and required a lot of garlic onion and spices, and now it is simmering away on the rayburn, filling the house with wonderful curry aroma.. I shall be dreaming rogan josh tonight.

I’m sad to read that the attempts to stop the  proposed cull of badgers in Pembrokeshire has failed.

Ironically, they plan to vaccinate the badgers in England, starting next year with injectable vaccination, and following in 2014 with bait.

I know how tragic it is when a farmer loses animals to bTB – but they don’t keel over from the lurgy itself.. no.. the man from DEFRA buys them off the farmer.  I have trouble believing they go to so much trouble to protect us humans, when in fact the meat will often end up in the food chain – only severely ill animals are removed completely.. if they are only showing lesser signs of the diseases, they are still eaten.  And it was only as recently as 2006 that milk from infected cows was not put in the tankers with the rest of the milk.  Now, it is mixed with slurry and spread on the fields… 

There is so much controversy about this subject. Each time there is a cull, such as there was in Ireland, the statistics can be read different ways, and are, and then the culls and trials are repeated.

I think vaccination of the badgers is the only way forward – I cannot see how culling will work unless all the badgers are culled.  Some research indicates that partial culling only encourages the badgers to move around  – moving into empty territory etc. 

In the UK we have lost so many of our native animals, and others are under threat.  I don’t want to lose badgers too.  I think it is great that we have mammals such as foxes and badgers living wild here. And yes, we might suffer losses to our poultry etc, but I still want them to stay.

And by some weird imbalance in the universe, we managed to do the bonfire/firework bit between showers.

I think, left to myself, I would happily forego fireworks, and not having other people let them off at other times would be a fair swap, but nothing is going to stop my Dad from enjoying them. 

The usual crowd of friends and family – the familiar array of chili con carnes, and pleasant evening.

Torrential rain. Always makes me laugh when people tell me how the raising of meat uses so much more water and therefore it’s not environmentally sound to eat meat (they say,tucking into their palm oil whatever..). Water, in this part of the world, is in plentiful supply.. and we live in one of the rainiest places in the UK.

We have too much mud.. already.. as well. The hen run is a quagmire, the lane is a pond.. but the livestock still need checking  and the wellies have been refound..

It just seemed to sneak up on us – I suppose the good weather making us forget it was autumn, then suddenly it’s November.  And blustery and raining.

I’ve stripped the last of the tomato plants, and picked my last tomatoes – a few more batches of roasted tomato sauce for the freezer, and some jars of green tomato chutney to come.

And regret.. now we realise how much time we had before, with the longer days and dry weather – now suddenly its raining and dark at five, and the digging has yet to be done.

On the other hand, the woodburner is lit, the rayburn roasting those tomatoes and stewing pumpkin (the jack-o-lantern is cut for pumpkin pulp, and will eventually be reborn as scones, or pie or cake…), fibre is being process and thoughts turn to doing something about the disaster area known as ‘the house’ and winter thoughts are welcome.

It seems to me that there are many markers for this particularly time of year. It starts perhaps with the clocks changing, slinks into halloween, through samhain and finally finishes with bonfire night. I expect there are many more festivals I don’t know of – but they are all about the end of summer. It’s all over , time for winter pursuits.

Once again, we had a themed dinner – toad in the hole followed by pumpkin cake (made from the inside of the sick pumpkin, which was grown and donated by my Dad).   Himself has been having a fine time answering the door wearing a black sheet, a hastily made paper mask, and carrying his scythe… the kids love it.. and so does he.  They also seem to appreciate our dodgy sense of humour when it comes to pumpkin carving too….

It’s been unseasonably warm lately – I’ve been doing loads of drying laundry  outside – and am constantly surprised by how early it gets dark – as it does not fit with the weather.

I’ve been out cutting up logs today; a slow are arduous process with a bowsaw, but think of the money we save on gym membership (well not as I never did have membership.. but you get the drift). Looking up (any excuse for a breather) I noticed a complete mackerel sky.

Apparently in other European countries they are called sheep cloud – and it makes sense – lots of little blobby white clouds against a blue background. but in the UK, it seems, we prefer our weather fishy.  The saying goes:

Mackerel sky, mackerel sky – never long wet, never long dry

and apparently there is some truth in the saying. So – I’m expecting a couple more days of the same weather, and then a change – to rain.

Mind you, in the same way as  I always check my watch after reading a sun dial, I also compared notes with the BBC weather page….