Lamb!

Around October, Hubby came home and asked if we wanted sheep.  This inspired a 'look' from me.

We've talked about sheep but have been a little afraid of them.  We keep hearing things from the local sheep farmers like "If you have one, you might as well have a hundred" - because they're a lot of work and "they have this tendency to just die for no apparent reason, the trick is to try and keep them alive for long enough to make a few bob off them."

When you have hundreds (or in some case thousands) of sheep, losing the odd one is probably not much of an issue.  For us, losing one is losing a fairly big investment comparatively.  So I've been a bit wary.

Hubby's boss had a ewe and two lambs he needed to sell and offered them to us for $240.  He told us she was an escape artist and she was teaching her lambs all the tricks.  I asked him if he was setting us up for failure - if she's escaping from his place, why should our place be any better?

He has the five strand cattle fencing, we have the netted sheep and deer fencing, we should be okay.

We managed to squeeze Nibbles and her lambs into the back of my tribute (although it was a long, smelly and occasionally noisy drive) and brought them to their new home where they settled in quite quickly.

One of the lambs was a wether, so it was decided that he'd be Christmas dinner.  Our local homekill man won't come out for just one lamb though.  We could slaughter it ourselves and drop it in to him to process but if we'd done that part, we might as well do the rest.

I started doing my research and thought I had it fairly well sussed, but we both worried a bit about the possibility of botching the actual kill.  Not only would my poor animal suffer needlessly if I did it wrong, but it would also make the meat tough.  After some discussion, we called the neighbour who was quite happy to come over and take us through it with our first one.

I told Hubby he needed to be there for it.  I've been present for all our homekills, I feel I owe it as a mark of respect to the animal I've raised to witness this but also it's something I believe to be missing from modern society.  People are removed from where their food comes from and this is just as important a part of the process as everything else.

Miss Eight (she's had a birthday not so long ago) was keen to be there too.  I did warn her that it might be a bit frightening or gross but she was not worried so she came along too.  The neighbour tied the front two legs and one of the back ones together.  He explained that many people are injured because they just don't expect the kicking and thrashing that just slaughtered animals do.  I'd seen it before with the pigs - I saw them shot and dropped, but when they're bleeding out there are all the muscle and nerve twitches that go on.  One of my pigs looked like he was trying to stand and the other turned full somersaults.  They were dead and not suffering, but it is a bit unnerving the first time you see it.

Both Hubby and Miss Eight didn't think it was all that bad, I still maintain that this was because the legs were tied and the thrashing wasn't too noticeable.

The neighbour kept explaining things to Hubby - this is fairly standard, they all do that - until he realised that I was the one getting my hands dirty helping him skin and gut and sort through the bits for what we were going to keep.

I kept the skin, heart, liver and kidneys.  I was going to clean out the intestines for sausage casing but Hubby thought I had enough to do with this lamb and didn't need the extra work.  Being me, I'm quite proud that all the waste fitted inside one 20 litre paint bucket.

Butchering the next day was an eye opener for Hubby.  As he wrapped one of the legs, he asked how much I would have paid for that in the supermarket.  At least $50 - it was a full leg of at least 3kg.  He didn't believe me at first.  I told him that lamb averages about $25/kg (which he later verified).  Then he did all the maths - our 20+kg lamb would have cost $500 in the supermarket!  When are we getting more lambs?

Hubby wanted his lamb's fry, but never got around to cooking it, so that went with the rest into the dog food.  I chopped the offal into cubes and put it in the slow cooker (on an extension cord outside on the deck) with 2kg of mince and plenty of oats and rice for several hours.

I washed and trimmed the skin and tanned it.  We recently got a wonderful book (below hopefully if I can get the code to work) that includes several recipes for tanning skins.  I used the one made from baking soda and kerosene.  The problem was that it didn't tell you how you know when the skin is done.  I figured when I was scraping it all off the next day and getting damp kerosene out of the skin that it was a pretty good sign.  I left it stretched to allow the last of the kerosene to evaporate and it's looking perfect.  The skin is going to be slippers for me and we'll see what I do with the left over bits.  I'm already getting orders from everyone :)

Skin fairly fresh and new.

Skin after about a week of 'processing'.