Organic chicken

Today we have slaughtered the first of the four table birds that we got three months back, we have reared them for around 100 days, and the first one has weighed in at 6lb 4ozs, approximately 28000 grams, he looks good and has good breast length, under organic standards, slaughtering should not happen until at least 84 days so we were more or less on target. At least we know what he was fed on, and that he enjoyed his life. He will get stuffed with a few herbs and served with all our own veg.
Wednesday has been set aside for the slaughtering of the two geese that we reared this year, this is our Yule tide celebration meal which we will be sharing with some friends, although we shall miss having so many geese around we know that our dinner enjoyed their life's and have been fed on the best of feed, totally GM free. Hopefully they will taste as good as they look.
There have been a few hard frosts, but so far no more snow, the days are still sunny for the most part, tonight there seems to be a fog descending.
This coming Tuesday is the solstice, [the shortest day] and there is a Lunar eclipse, I'm sure this must have some significance, although we don't know what it is, no doubt someone will tell us. We are not too sure if we will be able to see it, I shall have to Google to see where it is visible from.

Yule Tide

For two decades we have tried to skip Christmas and to some degree we have been successful, we refuse to become part of the consumer frenzy which surrounds this time of year, it is above all the celebration of the shortest day, and looking to the future, the longer days, the planting of the new crops and of new life in the spring, somehow it has been hijacked by the big corporations to make loads of money. Even here in Galicia we saw the first signs of Xmas at the end of Oct. We will celebrate, but it is very home spun, we always make a cake, but this is because we like a nice rich fruit cake, we will have a special meal,but they are still running around the field at the moment,[goose] and we always have a 'Xmas Pudding' but again, this is because we both love Xmas pudding, the veg is from the garden. What day we will have our Yule Tide meal has yet to be decided.If we do decorate the house it will be done a day before our celebration from whatever greenery we can find.As we have no open fires we can't have a Yule log, but we always make a candle holder from whatever interesting log we find.
We have a puppy lodging with us for the next month,owned by friends who have gone to the warmth of Tenerife for a month, he has settled well and our cats are fine with him, however our two kittens do not like him, they have had little contact with our own dogs, but no doubt, after a month they will at least tolerate him.
The last couple of weeks have been unseasonally warm, this warmth followed early snow which was very pretty and didn't last long, today however it feels as though the weather is about to change again, although sunny there is a distinct chill in the air.