Fat of the Land

So, the boys recently went pheasant hunting again.  They had an opportunity last year to go with one of my husband's good friends from work and they had a blast.  I had never cooked pheasant before and was not even sure I had eaten it before.  I looked up a recipe on All Recipes and found an awesome crockpot one that we tried and absolutley LOVED IT!  They were able to go two weekends in a row this year so we have some nice pheasant put away in the freezer for some future yummy meals.  We actually just finished up some yummy pheasant noodle soup :)

I love that the boys love to hunt together.  I love that my son gets the opportunity to do things like this with his dad.  I love that they got to spend some time with some other men.  These are good experiences for my son.  There was a very kind man there that was hunting and spent some time mentoring and showing my son some tricks of the trade.  I especially love having fresh meat in the freezer that was put there by my boys who pesonally worked to get it there.  It is a blessing and a privilege to still be able to hunt for your food.

I had hoped to use our chickens for meat on the table also, but that hasn't quite happened yet.  We did process a few of the roosters when we first started but haven't done any since.  My hope is that we might buy some meat birds this spring (it's all but here!) and process those.  Our local farm store had Red Rangers last year and I am hoping they get them again.  They are supposed to make good meat birds without all the problems that come from the Cornish crosses.

The challenge with our main crew of chickens is that so many have become pets.  We currently have 24 laying hens and 2 roosters.  I had to recently rehome two of the roosters.  It was sad because one was the son and the other was the grandson of my current top dog rooster.  You can read more about that in my previous post about having one boss. Of our 24 hens two are from our very first batch (Misty Dawn and Gertrude -Gertie) and they will stay until they pass. Several others in the flock have become very dear to us so they will probably get to stay and 10 of them are new layers from last spring.  I have been contemplating who might need to go this spring.  I have not come to any final decisions.

At any rate, being able to put food on the table from something you caught (we have fish in the freezer too), hunted or raised is certainly a great privilege. We can definitely enjoy the fruits of our labor from this.  It will be garden time soon and I hope once again to attempt to have success in this area.  It has been many years since we have had a truly productive garden.  We have battled bugs and weeds horribly each year and one year pretty much lost the whole tomato crop to blight.  Ughh!  It remains a challenge.

How about you?  Do you have big garden plans?  Do you or someone in your family hunt? We are certainly ready for spring around here.  Until we meet again!