in my kitchen, around the farm

root cellars, sweet bulls, and our favourite go-to fast meal

I really shouldn’t make fun of her, but come on! In case you ever needed to see what a mad cow looked like, here you go. Bea getting her annual hoof trimming. The rig is all hydraulic and her hoof trimmer is an awesome, skilled fella’ we are so grateful for. When I say, “we”, that’s the humans, not necessarily Bea.

We continue to roll, full steam ahead (maybe dwindled steam ahead), into harvest season. Last week we put a few dozen rabbits in the freezer and completed the butchery and wrapping of our second steer. We’re going to do something a little different with our third steer. Instead of aging for the three weeks we normally do, we’re going to start cutting and wrapping around the two week mark. We’ve always done a minimum of three weeks. A couple of times we even aged up to five or six weeks (we were quite unhappy with the wastage and wouldn’t do that again). But, I would like to see if two weeks may bring us the same flavour and tenderness benefits that three does. We’ll see.

A little friend I made in the forest yesterday. A Barred Owl.

The root cellar is having its concrete roof poured next week. Troy has all of the walls tarred and waterproofed (I was so tempted to write feathered). There are drainage holes and, soon enough, air vents through the roof. The floor is the black granite rock that was naturally present. We have started filling in along the walls. It’s actually starting to look like a root cellar! But, wow, what an undertaking! A much bigger job than we anticipated. What you save in dollars by doing much yourselves, you pay for in energy. Then again, the energy currency brings its own payment in good health and vigour, right?

Looking down, into the root cellar.

Our loaner bull will be heading back to his home in the next week or two. He’s a young Devon bull. Such a charmer. Just one of those easy going, mild mannered bulls that is so darn likeable. He’s going to grow into a fine, powerful bull. We were lucky that our farmer pals let us use him this summer. Our vixen cows introduced him to the great decadences of bovine love in the forest. Scandalous.

We still have all of the fowl to harvest. We usually do that in November, before moving them up to their winter area around the barn. We’re going to go into this winter with