We had a duck damage herself yesterday morning and somehow, she ended up with broken ribs and internal bleeding. I originally thought that it was a broken leg, but it doesn’t matter either way, when you’ve got a hurt duck, you need to put them down.

Sooner than I liked and in weather colder than I appreciated, I was catching and holding onto the poor thing, while Nathan did the deed. Five minutes later, she had splashed blood all over me, and I was ready to start cleaning her.

It’s been a while since we had to kill anything and I was shaky and cold as I dressed her out. It wasn’t until I had my hands inside her that I discovered the large blood clots and broken ribs.

I don’t like killing, but the pay off is so very worth it and we got to eat duck for two nights running.

Yesterday, I poached her, in a light veg stock, with some extra salt, onions, carrot, celery and garlic, saving the poaching stock for tonight.

I reduced down the stock until it was suitably flavoursome and then made a basic duck risotto, using the left over meat and veg from the stock, plus the stock itself. Nothing fancy, just delicious.

No photos because it wasn’t until some people asked for the recipe on twitter than I decided to blog it.

Ingredients:

Duck stock, brought to a boil and reduced slightly.
Boiling water, in case the flavours get too intense
1/4 of cream
1 c of chopped cooked duck pieces.
the veg from the bottom of the stock from yesterday (I had garlic, onion, celery and carrot, all suitably duck flavoured)
a little less than 1 cup of arborio rice.
1 TB each oil and butter

Method:

Melt the oil and butter together and then add the rice. Cook until the rice is translucent and then add a ladleful of hot duck stock.

Stir until the stock is absorbed, and then add another ladleful. Stir.

Repeat until the rice is just about al dente, before adding in the cooked vegetables and duck meat. Somewhere in there, taste it and make sure the flavours aren’t too strong. If they are, use boiling water instead of stock for the final few ladles full.

Finish with the cream and serve with chopped parsley and Parmesan on top.

***

It also would have been nice with chopped mushrooms added, or with peas, or with other veg. I was working with what I had in my pantry and fridge, which was not very much.

Normally, if I hadn’t made the stock with veg in, I would saute off onion and garlic in the butter/oil mix, before adding the rice. You could also saute off the veg of your choice before starting the rice, adding it back in at the last moment.

The trick to good risotto is to stir, gently and constantly and to keep it simple. Finish with cream to loosen the grains of rice and season to taste.

I was looking through the archives here this morning, because after this years terrible tomato harvest, I needed to remind myself that yes, I can actually grow tomatoes and that yes, in previous years, the garden has done very well.

Which unfortunately wasn’t the case this year. An early freak frost killed my entire garden, some bastard stole 17 of my ducklings and it got cold, rather fast. I was left wondering what happened to summer and all my grandiose plans of preserving lots of tomatoes and drying peas and beans and having lots of produce to spare.

The best laid plans and all that jazz.

My autumn crop is in now, turnips and kohl rabi, carrots and beetroot and lots of kale and greenery. Hopefully this lot will do well. We’ve covered the garden in chicken wire to prevent the chooks scratching up the seedlings, but from the mess of hay that is scratched around in there, I suspect the only thing that will actually keep the chooks out is a quick axe blow to their neck and a long slow cook. That is the plan of course, but first one has to catch the bastard things, which is not as easy as you would assume and is definitely more energy than I can be bothered expending. I might just ask my brother to do it all for me. Again. If I promise to feed him, I’m sure he’ll process the roosters for me when I’m feeling too lazy to do it myself.

Of course, things always work out better inside my head.

My duck hatched 13 babies out of 15 eggs. They’re 3 weeks old now and super cute.

My chook had chickens, they’re 6 weeks old now. From what I can see, we’ve got 2 roosters and 3 hens. Or maybe the other way around. It’s really hard to tell. I’ve got another hen broody and she’s on 11 eggs, so I’m hopeful we’ll get 6 chickens out of her.

We had to kill the rooster, as he started to attack Amy. He was rather stringy and tough, so a slow poach probably would have been a better idea than a slow roast. We’ll know for next time though. I turned his leftovers into an amazing chicken casserole and it was great.

I do however want to invest in a hand mincer, so that I can mince the older birds, who for whatever reason, aren’t working out.

I’ve got 2 ducks sitting on eggs at the moment, with ducklings due in a fortnight and just under 5 weeks respectively (the latter duck has only been sitting for a few days). 16 eggs and 22 eggs under them. I found another (!) nest in the shed too, at last count there were 12 eggs in there and no duck sitting yet.

I was annoyed to lose a duck to the highway, some idiot driving too fast hit her. Even worse, she was sitting on 25 eggs. I checked them over and as they hadn’t started to develop – she hadn’t been on them long – I’ve given some to my father for eating, and popped some into another nest. Hopefully it will be okay. Disappointing to lose a laying adult though.

It’s going to be interesting in a few weeks when everything hatches. Somehow it looks like we might have just fallen into duck farming, if the interest in what we’re doing with them when they’re grown is anything to go by. I think I can deal with that, I like my duckies.

So that’s me. How are you?

One of my ducks has (fingers crossed) started to sit on her clutch of eggs. While she ate breakfast this morning, I got a chance to count the eggs and it looks like there are 16. Of course, there were only 15 yesterday, so either she is still laying, or one of the other ducks has been using the same nesting box. I hope it’s the former, not the latter.

I also did my standard wander around and check all the other nests.

At last count there were:

1 egg in a nest in the stable.

6 eggs in the blackberries

5 eggs in the shed (our shed, not the ducks shed)

2 eggs in 2 nesting boxes

Plus the 16 the oldest duck is sitting on.

That is twenty seven duck eggs, waiting to be sat on.

I also suspect another duck is laying in the paddock next door, and I haven’t found that nest yet.

Every morning is a bit like a duck egg treasure hunt, as for a while, I had ducks laying everywhere and nowhere twice. Under my hedge, on the side of the road, under the pine tree (on the side of the road).

Everywhere.

I’ve also got a broody chook who is on 9 eggs, care of Mum and freecycle.

My biggest issue however, is that I am certain my light grey bantum hen is laying, but do you think I can find a nest? One of the chooks lays in a nesting box every day and yesterday I found one sole egg in the stable in the opposite corner to the ducks eggs, but nothing today.

Let’s just say, hunting for eggs isn’t much fun once you grow up and those eggs are no longer chocolate.

Warning, this post talks about things that some readers may find distasteful. Please don’t read it if you can’t get your head around animals being slaughtered for food.

***

There is a feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you kill an animal. It’s that sinking feeling as you hit a wallaby in your car, that drop when you have to kill something for it’s own good.

These are the things I thought about as I held a flapping dead chook in my hand this afternoon.

3 hours previously:

Walking to collect the eggs, I entered the shed with the laying boxes and spooked one of my hens – she wasn’t laying, but she bolted when she saw me.

Another hen was laying at the time, curled up in her nesting box as I went down the row, collecting duck eggs and a chook egg.

Only…

Is that a peck hole? In my egg shell? Fuck.

It was, a suspicious peck in an egg – done recently as there was no dirt or grit around the entrance. As recently as me walking into the chook shed.

Fuck it.

Some chooks, they eat eggs. Something happens and they discover what is inside an egg and they start pecking all the eggs to pieces. If left, they’ll teach the other hens how to eat eggs and it will end up terribly. No eggs = no baby chickens = no reason for keeping chooks.

There is only one cure for an egg eating hen, and that is a quick death.

A few days ago, I’d found a duck egg broken in the bottom of the nest. I thought it odd at the time, knowing how tough the shells on my eggs are and I wasn’t sure a duck standing on the egg would have broken it.

I didn’t clean it up at the time, planning to come back and clean the straw and broken mess out of the bottom of the nest when I got a chance. So this morning when I found the pecked egg, I remembered the broken duck egg and went over to clean the nest.

Only to find the entire egg was gone, shell and all.

An egg eater, for sure. A possum or rat, well, they would have taken eggs from the other nests as well and made a right mess.

At this point, I was fairly sure that the chook I’d seen disappear when I walked into the chook shed was my culprit. She didn’t make an alarm call of ‘I was laying and PREDATOR’ or act like the other hens, quietly clucking at me in distaste when I bothered them.

AND she was standing leaning into the nest with the pecked egg.

So, we did what you do with an egg eater.

We caught her and killed her, humanely and fast. One chop and she went from upside down and relaxed in my hand, to dead. It was fast and it was painless for her, over in less than a moment. Slightly more traumatic for me, as my stomach dropped and I felt the feelings that come with slaughtering something.

But this is how it works when you’re making an effort to live more sustainably and only wanting to eat happy, ethical chickens. No one likes killing, (no one normal anyway), but it’s a fact of life.

Once she stopped flapping the death flaps and relaxed, we strung her up by a leg and did what you do – skinning, gutting, cleaning. It took a little while, as it was the first chook I’d done myself. I watched plenty of times as a child, but the actual act of doing, well, slow and steady and all that. There are things I’d never asked my father, like ‘how do you get the lungs out?’ and ‘how do you make sure you’ve got all the unborn eggs and kidneys out?’ but no matter, I worked it out myself. Me and my sharp knife and Nathan chatting to me while I worked. It was okay once I started, less like killing and more like processing meat. No different to gutting and filleting fish – a regular part of my growing up.

And then I brought the meat inside and chopped it into pieces for soup – which is bubbling nicely at the moment.

Tonight when we eat, I will silently thank the chook for living a good life and enabling me to eat ethical meat my way and I will know that this chook, she had the best life possible before she died and that her death wasn’t traumatic, for anyone other than Nat and I. Amy walked outside just after we’d chopped the hen’s head off and we talked about it.

That this is where meat comes from. We don’t get meat from the supermarket, meat comes from animals and our job is to give animals a happy life and ethical humane death.

Note the yellow fat? Proper free range healthy chooks have yellow fat and skin. Supermarket chooks have generally been bleached to make them more ‘attractive’. Personally, I’ll take bright yellow over covered in bleach any day.

This is once I’d broken it down and was browning in olive oil.

Recipe for chicken and potato soup:

Take your chicken, make sure it’s free range and break it down into it’s various elements. Take off the breasts, chop the legs down close to the carcass and remove them from the body. Brown everything in olive oil, including the carcass.

When everything is well browned, add 5 roughly chopped onions and a leek. Let them colour a little. Don’t burn anything!

Deglaze the pot with some white wine if you’re organised, or if you’re me, deglaze with warm water.

Cover the chicken pieces with water and bring to a simmer.

Add 4 large potatoes, chopped.

Cook until the meat falls from the bones and the potato falls apart.

Season with salt and pepper.

My ducks are happy – not only has there been a little bit of sunshine lately, but they’ve discovered the vegetable garden, full of slugs and snails. And unlike my chooks, the ducks don’t do that much damage.

So yay, happy ducks! Ooooh, they’re going to have such tasty babies come springtime. I can’t wait. Who knows, I might even end up with ducks to share!

So today, thanks be to the great and mighty freecycle, I added to our family.

Aren’t they delicious looking?

I must admit, I love ducks. I love their personalities, I love the way they have so much character. I love the little peeping noises muscovy ducks make and I love the way they taste, roasted, for dinner.

Sigh.

I just love ducks.

I have no idea what sex these birds are, at 6 months old and being a complete non-expert, I can’t tell yet.

The idea will be though, to keep one drake and however many girls we’ve got, slaughtering any extra drakes as they get fat and juicy looking.

Then, we’ll let them lay eggs, steal some eggs for eating and then let them have babies.

Babies that I’ll happily eat as they get big enough.

Say it with me now… Mmmmmmm, duck….

Mmmmmmmmm ducks.

I like ducks.

We’re slowly getting our act together to get some chooks as well and I’m looking forward to that. Fresh eggs and free range chicken always make me happy.

Then the next thing to do is plant more fruit trees and fence off the orchard, fill a fence line with raspberry canes and add some red currants in there somewhere.

I think it’s going to be a very busy autumn.