Could you feed your family from your farm.

_Brian wrote: »

Back to something closer to the original post.

Hypothetically of course.

How many of you would have a go at slaughtering and butchering a sheep, pig or heifer if the need arose ??

I’m quite sure I would.

Before the modern set of rules and regulations it was common for families to slaughter a pig, lamb/ewe or a goat for the table. I assisted both my late Uncle and late FIL shooting, bleeding, skinning/singeing and paunching both species but we used to bring cattle to a local butcher. The front loader was used to hoist the animal so that it would bleed out properly. I learned how to pluck/clean poultry and paunch rabbits from my Grandmother as a child.

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Used to shoot two pigs a year for a local elderly fellow.
He was an "enthusiastic amateur " butcher.
A dozen chops was the price for the job.
Legislation has stopped him now.
Not sure what the Dept. would do if they found you at it, but I'm sure loss of your full years income would be involved...

Edit link - hopefully this one works - file:///C:/Users/me/Downloads/Slaughter%20of%20Animal%20for%20Private%20Consumption%20FINAL.pdf
Copy the link and paste it into your browser to search.
Officialdum try to hide this information from us!!

_Brian wrote: »

Back to something closer to the original post.

Hypothetically of course.

How many of you would have a go at slaughtering and butchering a sheep, pig or heifer if the need arose ??

I’m quite sure I would.

Ive only ever done small animals for human consumption like fowl, fish and rabbit, got a notion and cut up a cow who fell down a glen for dogs once when I was a teenager, I dug a grave for the rest of her, ( I'd actually forgotten that!).
So kill, bleed, skin, gut and hang?
The butchery would be rough after, but I'm not sure it would affect the flavour for roasting or mince, forget about steaks or chops though.
Hard work on the fingers though.

People would learn this from each other very quickly. Would be interesting to see what would develop from all the skilled businessmen becoming farmers all of a sudden. And the scientists, they would probably come up with something new..

some good utube videos on the process. I think it should be allowed for home use only and it's a good skill to have.

Already grow most of my veggies in the garden.

Cows and pigs and chickens wouldn’t be a problem, but where I live they are currently prohibited. Have a few acres so plenty of room for a few animals in the case of having to go back in the case of armageddon technologically speaking.

NSAman wrote: »

Already grow most of my veggies in the garden.

Cows and pigs and chickens wouldn’t be a problem, but where I live they are currently prohibited. Have a few acres so plenty of room for a few animals in the case of having to go back in the case of armageddon technologically speaking.

I don't know where you live but afaik you can keep hens in a urban garden (but no males - roosters/cockerels) and you cannot keep water fowl - ducks/geese.

CelticRambler wrote: »

Have ye all forgotten that sugar comes in forms other than Siucra granulated 1kg? Bzzzzzzzz

And as for salt ...? Ehh, ye live on a small island, surrounded by salt water. Bring the children to the beach for a week every year and have them haul a few hundred gallons of water to boil off over a campfire every day. Be grand for a year afterwards if ye're careful. :cool:

Unfortunately now sea water can/does contain micro plastics :mad:

Base price wrote: »

Unfortunately now sea water can/does contain micro plastics :mad:

Yeah, but so does rainwater, groundwater, tapwater ... and besides, it doesn't stop people paying a fortune for sea-salt that's produced in exactly the same way from exactly the same water.

Nothing like seeing a diesel-driven bulldozer with rubber tyres driving across salt-flats for a bit of perspective on some of the nonsense spouted by fancy TV chefs.

Nothing sown here with years but when I was young everyone had a garden.
We had a half acre of spuds along with another patch with all the other usual vegetables.
Kale and turnips were sown for the cows and fed with beet pulp I think.
Rabbits during the summer and I had the job of paunching them.
I shoot a deer or 2 for the freezer most years.
I mince most of it.
So if we were to start gardening again we would not starve initially.

Birdnuts wrote: »

Butchery is one of the many usefull life skills that never seem to be taught in our schools

You are having a laugh right? with todays teenagers and parents....Id venture a guess that large number of them wouldn't want it and some would actively object never mind the department of education etc

I used to dissect lamb hearts and occasionally the full lungs, heart, liver with trachea and oesophagus etc etc all connected for kids if they were interested and while many were, a lot of them would go into hysterics and I'd have to arrange another room for them (which is fair enough I suppose if you are squeamish etc) so it wouldn't be without its difficulties that way although Ill say one thing for kids, most of them are more up for trying new things than adults in fairness.

We got a heads up years and years ago about using beef hearts etc due to risk if cjd .... and its harder and harder to go to an abattoir and get the lungs etc

You can still buy the hearts without hassle but teaching butchery is as unlikely as hell to happen unless society out there changes drastically. I'd imagine it would do more than raise eyebrows if I was still at it and proposed to introduce a short course on butchery.

The focus is on stuff like wellbeing, paperwork and "planning" now and pr exercises to justify dept gurus and their "reform" in case anyone would spot they are essentially useless box tickers pushing a box ticking cover your hole agenda in a system where everyone has rights if they want them but seemingly no responsibilities if they don't want them. the kind of agenda that seems to have slowly destroyed the UK education system.

Birdnuts wrote: »

Butchery is one of the many usefull life skills that never seem to be taught in our schools

Jesus we have a mantra against eating meat seeping into schools, there’d be some twist in their knickers if little billy was being taught how to butcher a bit of meat.

As a species were getting dumber and less capable of surviving, perfect to be wiped out by something simple as all actual practical skills will be lost.

Ah. That bit about the pencil reminds me of the space race in the 60s. The Americans found ink pens were useless in space and spent millions of dollars in research to design new devices for writing in zero gravity. The Russians just used the pencil.
Probably a myth but worth a chuckle.

Or a calf and a machete!