we butchered the smiley goat

So, my husband and I butchered the goat. We were pretty proud of ourselves. It was the first animal larger than a chicken that we'd raised & butchered ourselves.

Quick recap: My husband and I met in San Francisco. We were vegetarian city kids. I spent 14 years a vegetarian. The only thing I knew about animal slaughter for many years I learned from PETA brochures. I always wanted a farm, but I thought I'd have a vegetarian farm. I was young and naive. ;) Then we decided to stop being vegetarian but eat only meat humanely raised. Shortly after that our good friends taught us how to butcher ducks and then a pig. We learned so much from them! (I'm talking about Brett, who wrote for the winter newsletter :) ). So really, this is still all so new to us. It doesn't come naturally yet (at all), and we have no idea how to properly cut meat into fancy things like steaks. And I feel like I'm reading another language when I read meat cooking recipes, never having cooked it in my adult life. But, we're making great strides and learning more & more all the time.

Here's the site we did our goat butchering. Under the trees with pretty views all around.

And here is the attractive (ha) pile of bones left after we carved most all the meat off. It was on Easter hence all the eggs in the background. I pressure cooked the bones in water to get all the nutritious goodies out of them, then I strained out the bones & weird cartiligy-goo, and canned up the water I cooked it all in as soup broth.

 I love broth, it looks so nourishing. Because it is. :)



Some of the meat I cubed, browned in a skillet, then mixed with all these tasty veggie ingredients and more of the broth and canned up 14 quarts of goat stew!



Here the stew is heating up before being put in quart jars. Notice the ever present pot of milk being turned into cheese in the background. I am swimming in cheese and milk and am dreaming of pigs to feed some of it to. Our hugest problem is storage. We don't have anywhere that keeps near 55 degrees to store the finished cheeses in. Hard cheeses require a constant temperature of 50-55. But that is a whole other topic. Back to the goat.......  (Oh yeah, I just noticed that also in the background is some of my "rooster and rice stew" as well! :)  I've been following the recipes in Jackie Clay's canning book for all of this, by the way) Okay now REALLY back to the goat....

The finished product! Delicious goat stew. I call it our slow-fast food. Slow to create, but fast when I need to grab a quick meal off the pantry shelf!

Well apparently I'm done with the goat. :p   Here is a random picture of the duck egg popcakes I made the other day. They were very yummy! This was a recipe I had written down from Emily at Wild Roots Homestead long ago and finally used.

Besides swimming in milk and cheese we are also rolling in eggs. Yay for good old home raised farm foods. And now, I must go punch down the dough rising in the windowsill and create pizzas for dinner from it. With extra cheese. ;)