Farming for Self-Sufficiency

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But this is the way you do it. Cut lean meat up into strips, say an inch square but the longer the better, along the grain, or fibre, of the meat. This is most important: do not cut it across the grain. Lay it in dry salt for six hours. Wash the salt off it and hang it—if in southern Africa in the dry season—in the shade but in the breeze-if in the British Isles in the chimney. I leave mine in the, chinmey, in light smoke, for say three days, take it down, hang it up in the kitchen, and it is perfect biltong. It is as hard as hickory. To eat it you just pare or shred little shavings off the end of it across the grain with your Joseph Roger 'Lambsfoot' knife (old back-velders will know what I mean), put it on bread and butter, and it is delicious.

Rennet. If you kill calves you can make your own rennet, or you can make it if you cadge a few calf stomachs off a butcher. The calves must have been young suckling calves. The fourth stomach is the one you want and it is known, to rennet-makers, as the vell. Take your veil, or more if you have them, clean them with a cloth but don't wash them. Sprinkle dry salt on them and leave for a day or two or until they are needed. Then cut them into strips, put in water which should have had salt added and been boiled and then cooled. If you have four veils you will want a gallon of this brine: if one veil a quarter of a gallon. Soak the strips in the brine for five days, squeezing the strips in the hands three times a day to get the rennet out. Strain the brine off carefully and that is your rennet. You will need eight times as much as this for a cheese recipe as you would need of bought rennet. Sally and I have never made it and I got this out of a book.

POULTRY

To kill a chicken grab its legs in your left hand, put your right hand over the back of its head, bend the head upwards at the same time stretching its neck. It is a turning movement of the hand. You will feel the spine snap. If you do it too hard you will pull the head off which doesn't matter but it looks disgusting.

Start plucking immediately if you are going to dry pluck. Every second counts, for the feathers come out easily when the bird is warm but very uneasily when it is getting cold. Sit down, put the wings (which will go on flapping violently for a time) between your knees, and quickly pluck the feathers off the breast. You will soon learn how to pluck without tearing the skin—it's matter of experience, and Old Mother Common Sense. Then pluck the whole bird. Sally and I sit, in the winter, and do it in front of the fire and throw the feathers straight on the fire, but the true self-supporter will not do this. The feathers should be preserved for stuffing pillows. If you do this with them pile them in a very slow oven, or on a grid over the stove, for some hours to dry first. At the very least throw them on the compost heap, where they will help to activate the compost. We are just lazy, and comfort-loving.

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