Saturday, January 7, 2017

Butchering the Naughty Kid

It seems that in every batch of new kids there is a naughty one. The one that learns to go through fences and eat the greener grass on the other side. Primrose was this year's troublesome goat. It started out fine with short trips through a fence before a quick dash back to mummy. She gradually become more adventurous and on several occasions squirmed through the ringlock into 'The Grove' - a plantation of seedling trees including some prized truffle inoculated hazels. The biggest of the trees were a pair of oaks about two metres tall. The fence is electrified and each tree has a substantial guard around it. The oaks each have one about a metre high.
Somehow Primrose managed to get into these guards, eat the tree and then squeal for help to get out. It was mind-boggling how she managed to do this feat of agility but it didn't help her cause. She had to go and we had a candidate for a New Year feast.

I am very new to butchering and having been vegetarian for a long time have found it to be a challenge. With this goat I didn't do the killing but I found I could do the gutting and skinning and butchering quite easily. The skin was in good enough condition to be salted and preserved.

Our friend Jeff committed the deed and after gutting and skinning the carcass was hung in our cool room for three days. Being only small it only needed to be chopped into a few pieces. We also did two of last year's wethers which required a bit more. Using a cleaver I had to smash through the bone in one clean hit to make chops. Apart from my trusty piece of wood splitting this worked well. 


I am even looking forward to my next butchering session. 

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