First Chicken killed for meat

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Killing your own food to eat
Well, we finally killed our first chook for meat, it was one of the first lot of  chickens we had, way back here

He was a male, and had just started crowing, so off with his head.  While it's difficult, it's also probably the most wholistic way of sourcing your own meat.  Buying them from the Supermarket having been raised in who knows what conditions, with you several steps removed from the process seems somewhat surreal in retrospect.  We keep the hens for laying eggs.  I guess I am now one of those people that thinks if you can't kill and prepare your own meat you really should not be eating it.

Slaughtered, plucked and gutted...

Anyway, we need to let him sit in the fridge for two days or so to let the rigor mortis out of his muscles, so he's not so tough.  Being so young he should make a lovely roast.  He weighs 1.5 kg, so the same as a size 15 chook from the supermarket but raised ah la natural.

Doing your own repairs
While we like that we're self sufficient in power and water etc sometimes things break down and need repairing, like this join in our main water line.

We noticed the tank had emptied much more quickly then it should have, with all the rain about it is tricky to try and find a water leak in the rain but we finally tracked it down to a really soggy patch right near the main pump itself, after a bit of excavation this is what we found, sure enough !!.

We had to go into town and grab some fittings and do a few repairs.