Ridiculous

That’s what I have to say about TWooie’s Flambe™.

It’s also what I have to say about this weather.  I cannot for the life of me keep a cucumber plant alive in all this rain; the stems keep withering and then the plant dies on me.  I am on my third set of cucumbers and I have one lepper-like plant left drooping defeatedly to the ground.  It’s pathetic.  We need some sun!!

Maybe they have bugs.  Oh no wait, that’s Wootie.

Sun or no sun, the dogs are always happy to be outside.

But they had to stay inside today, because it was A Time To Kill (Roosters).  I got so many roosters in my straight run chick lottery this year :(  Of  16 newly acquired chickens, 10 were roosters.  I sold one of the Marans, cuz they are expensive (and I kept one, along with the ONE Marans hen, as I am going to force them to make more of themselves for me), and I gave away the bantam roo, but ALL of the Welsummers and ALL of the Light Sussex were roosters.  One of the Welsummer roos got snatched by a coyote last week, but the rest were just sitting around being testy with one another and eating me out of house and home.  This was a major drag, not just for me, but for them … because unless roosters are for looking pretty in my coop (at a maxium rate of two at any given time) they are strictly for eating.

So I hit up my German friends the Chicken Killers and asked them if they wanted to come do the dirty deed in exchange for half the roos.  They were all over it.

***WARNING***

Dead rooster photos below!

Because I love our fans, I didn’t take photos of the actual slaughter, but I thought some of you might be interested in seeing how 4 month old roosters dress out.

Here’s my German friends with their assembly line of rooster plucking, hard at work.

I think I mentioned this last time, but these guys are super pro at the whole kill, clean and butcher business.  They bring all their own gear, even the table!  I keep telling them they should hold classes for local-eating wanna be suburban  farmers on the proper way to kill and clean a chicken.  They could make big bucks teaching people how to be self sufficient, I think.

This is the one I am cooking for dinner right now (maybe.  I don’t actually know.  They all look the same when they are dead).

I gotta admit that it’s a bit weird to eat something that I raised in my dining room, but you just can’t be sentimental when it comes to roosters.  They’re just too loud, aggressive and fighty to keep.  At least they get raised well with lots of freedom, food and care before they become food for me.  I think that counts for a lot.  Plus the flock of hens is way more relaxed now that they aren’t running a gauntlet of horny adolescent roosters every time they step out of the hen house.

I warned my landlord in advance that this was going to happen so his kids wouldn’t wander outside and accidentally stumble upon a big German man chopping the head off a chicken unawares, but apparently farm children are not even slightly fazed by this kind of thing.

The dogs, OTOH, were totally traumatized.  Not only did strangers come onto their property and NOT greet them with lots of loves an snuzzles, but they stole “their” chickens right out from under their noses.  I thought TWooie was going to have a heart attack.  Once I showed him the game meat our friends had brought them (they are also hunters, so they bring my dogs moose and deer and such) he totally zenned out.

Mmmm.  Meat.

And speaking of zenned out, my Dexter-Zen storage vaults have been amply replenished and agility class is fun with him again.  We have taken him right back to the basics – doing short short sequences, rewarding with the tuggy after those short sequences, lost of praise for a correct decision … the short sequences seem to be the biggest success, as his tiny pea brain is finally catching onto the fact that he gets to keep playing if he comes with me and goes where I go.  It’s been so successful that last night that we actually completed a whole 20 obstacles in succession, without him orbiting the moon, and even turning off some very tempting equipment that was not in the plan in order to follow me.  We were both excited about that!

There’s hope for my handsome fella yet!

Only 34 more days until Nationals.  Can you believe it?

Probably I should send in Tweed’s entry ;-)  Before The Sadist and Fiona both have a heart attack, or unleash an angry terrier on me.

Have a great long weekend ya’ll!