Forward planning

Jeeesh! You turn your back for a moment and all of a sudden it's been ages since you blogged.

Forward planning 1

The course I mentioned here was all about marketing meat from the croft. This is not a major part of our vision, but we do produce goats as a by-product of cheese-making and we can't always sell them while they are still alive. We are also intending to raise pigs to make full use of another by-product of cheese making ie whey. So off I went on this course - all paid for by various sources of public funding - I mean it wouldn't be catering to crofters if it wasn't.

It was a very good couple of days, and I learnt various things such as:

• - all abattoirs are crap and they steal your meat and mess up your beautiful animal with cack-handed butchery. And -
• all butchers are greedy gits and they are impossible to satisfy - anything you sell them will either be too lean (so I cannae offer you the price we discussed cos I can't sell it) or too fatty (ditto). And -
• all over Europe local produce is highly prized and local produce has a price premium over imported products. Except in Belgium, where they'll pay through the nose as long as it's imported. And -
• Meat sales are seasonal. Take lamb as an example. Legs sell in spring, chops in summer and cheaper neck end cuts sell in autumn and winter. Until a system of progressive or creeping slaughter is developed this seasonality is, and will remain, one of the major challenges facing meat producers and butchers alike.

Forward planning 2

Last year we took our animals to be slaughtered in Dingwall which is a good 2 hours drive away. There is now a new abattoir near Wick, built with huge public subsidies - clearly meant to be used by crofters - which is not only much closer but is also near to places we regularly visit - so we thought we'd better go check it out. We'd heard on the grapevine that this new slaughterhouse was crap and they steal your meat and mess up your beautiful animal with cack-handed butchery - but, well, what can you do? So we phoned and arranged to visit. And when we arrived we were given a right royal tour from a very large and very jovial and very enthusiastic slaughterman. He particularly enjoyed describing all the killing and butchery machines and showing us ramps that lifted up and baths that would strip the hair off a pig in three minutes - stand back and I'll show you - and this is the chute the skins go down and this is the chute for the tripe and this is where the vet inspects the livers and and and. I think we'll give 'em a go.

Forward planning 3

The treacle lager is now bottled. The young beer tastes excellent and should mature into a very tasty tipple indeed. Unfortunately I bottled the beer and then read the instructions and discovered that I'd not added enough priming sugar - so I had to go back and add more sugar to each bottle. When will I learn to read instructions before I start?

Forward planning 4, 5, 6 (eek) and, erm 7, and ouch oooh dunno maybe even 8

How pathetic and futile is this? This weeek I've been planting proper manly willow sticks -

in lines like hedges like, to provide shelter in years to come for fruit trees and veg plots and even goats, and goat food and maybe even baskets. I really do fancy a basket weaving course - have done ever since I saw a basket weaver at work when I worked here. Maybe one day. Hedges are meant to be straight (because ploughing a curve, especially with horse, is nigh on impossible) - but planting willows requires, amongst other things, soil. So my hedges tend to duck and weave, hopefully taking root in the little patches of soil I could find for them. I seem to remember learning at school that trees are very good at catching particulates blown on the winds - hence you get the deep forest soils of central Europe, soils developed in just such a manner over, well, I guess a good few years. It helps that the forests of central Europe were (and are of course) surrounded by land for thousands of miles on each side. Surrounded as we are on three sides by sea, for hundreds or thousands of miles I guess it'll take a wee bit longer to get to those deep rich soils here.

But we'll get there.