Requiem for Nero

It's been a bit of time since my last entry, so much for my best intentions.

In the interim, my I picked and my wife canned, about 15lbs of figs and pears from our backyard. She's made up a batch of fig chutney and a lot of pear butter. I was pleasantly surprised by the Pear Butter. I didn’t know what to expect. Think apple butter, but with pears. Yum, yum.

My youngest chick has grown long in the leg and is dancing for the hens. We’d hoped it would be a hen, but alas, we lost the coin toss.

We can only have one rooster in my city, so his father, a beautiful red Auracana named Nero, became my first try at processing chickens at home. It was hard to do it, but once I got going, I didn’t think about anything but the job at hand. It was a bit easier than dissecting in college, I guess because I wasn’t drawing everything as I went.

He was a two year old and we weren’t certain how to prepare him. I started out trying to broil him, but after an hour, he failed the fork test. So the next step was to borrow the neighbor’s pressure cooker. That went well. I was surprised at how dark the dark meat was and gamey. It was the color of a dark liver. Once I cut into that, my pups came running. They had ignored me until then, then suddenly they were at my feet whining. They got a little and didn’t seem to need to chew.

This was my first attempt at making stew, and I’ll be eating it all week. My wife said she liked it, but refuses to eat any of the meat in it. So it’s all mine.

On other fronts, my fall garden has been weeded and planted. I put in mostly squashes and am trying to get parsley started in my herb garden. My next step is to get some fill dirt delivered to level out the garden area for my yard. Maybe I’ll do that next week? If I get that in then it’s going to be planted in brassicas, lettuce, cabbage, etc…

And finally, I got some practice in for Tuesday’s Acoustic session at MacHenry’s in Ft. Worth. A friend there suggested I practice more on rhythm, something I’m awful with. So I downloaded the HammerHead drum synthesizer and have been using it for a metronome.

Until next time..