Friday on the Farm #6

It was a cold chilly day on the farm this Friday.

It began with a panic. I have three light sussex hens but when I came to let them out of the chook house this morning there were only two.

A search around the yard found the third safely tucked up under a low set water tank on a nest of eleven eggs.

Over morning tea we discovered that each hand on our bunch of bananas had twelve bananas on it. Is this the case for all bananas?

Then it was a trip to a farm further up the valley to pick up a cow that had been missing for nine months. She’d apparently been running there all the time and the farmer hadn’t known who owned her until he rang the Stock Squad.

I was so cold at midday; I went out to soak up what little sunlight there was. I was entertained by the antics of my pup Mopsy giving herself an adrenalin rush playing chicken with the cattle as they came in for their midday drink.  The calves on the other side of the fence were equally entertaining.

The ducks were all looking very wary when I snapped them in the cattle yards. Two of these big babies had been caught and dressed yesterday and they were a bit nervous about my intentions today.

This afternoon I cooked. First I put on a fruit cake. While it cooked I made some boiled custard from the extra eggs we found this morning and popped on a big pot of pea and ham soup. Then I prepared one of the ducks. I used my Stephanie Alexander Cook’s Companion to guide me and made a French-style roast.

We finished the day around the kitchen table in a nice warm kitchen with pea and ham soup, roast duck, bananas and custard - all but the ham hock coming from our own farm.
A very satisfying feeling.

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