We have a new card reader!

We recently got a new card reader (the other one seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth) so as soon as I can find my camera, I will update all of the pictures. Soon (hopefully) almost every entry will have a picture!

Bacon's Bacon

I keep forgetting to write about things as they happen, so here in the consensus on Bacon's meat. Everybody loves the meat from Bacon because it is really tender and juicy and yummy! The bacon is a big hit, and everybody who has tried it so far has asked for more! The pork loins are also really good, especially because the chef of the family has done some great dishes with them. They have been enjoyed by many guests, and there's still more because Bacon was such a big pig! We also made guanchale for the first time, which is the cheek of the pig seasoned and hung in a cold room. It turned out really well, and is really good when it's cooked and added to other foods, like soup or salads as it is really salty. Bacon produced a lot of sausage as well (over 70lbs!) so we eat that occasionally too. One of my favourites with the sausage is a disk of polenta that has been fried with a slice of sausage on top and a dab or creme fresh with basil on top. It makes a great appetizer, and lots of people have enjoyed it! We have yet to try the ribs (which will probably be my first time ever eating ribs) and I'm looking forward to it! I will post more as we try more of the different types of meat!

The Hawk

I thought that I had blogged about the hawk before, but apparently I haven't? I think it might have just been in the post about the turkeys though. Anyway, just to clarify, the hawk who eats our chickens in regular intervals has a friend now... I guess that word is getting out that we're the best place to eat around here. I had always hoped it would be for people though. We really don't appreciate the hawks eating our animals actually, and would like it if they would just go away. Sadly they don't seem to understand us, or if they do they just don't care. Either way, we have decided that we need to use force to get rid of them. Or at least scare them off for a long time. The problem is, they only come once every couple days, and it's usually when nobody is home, so we come home to a nice dead animal laying in the yard. Yay... But that's not really what we want to see when we come home. Someone proposed that we got someone to shoot the hawk. However, we don't really like the idea of shooting something like that, especially because we might just injure it and that would be no good. Then someone suggested an alarm system that would make a loud noise at them. As good as that seems in theory, it isn't very practical because how would you set that up? Any other suggestions are welcome, because this is really a problem for us. We do not wish to have a gourmet hawk feeding restaurant...

More about Matt

Matt is now really fluffy with mostly black fur except for his silver cheeks and ruff. He still sneezes a lot, but he's on medication so hopefully that will go away. And then even I may like him! Who knows... I will post a new picture of him as soon as I find a way to get my photos onto the computer (the card reader seems to have vanished off the face of the earth) because he's pretty cute now! We're still trying to pawn him off onto friends, but don't mind having him in the house as much anymore. Hopefully he will be completely cured of his ickiness soon, and won't snot or breath funnily at all!

Another "oops"

A couple days ago I found the newest button quail laying dead in the corner of the cage. And I don't mean that it was sitting really still (because button quails never do that), it was actually dead. We think that it was because its beak had overgrown, so it was long and curved, so it couldn't eat properly. Especially when the food gets low in the dish (which is my fault). We also noticed that it had really long toenails, so now we're going to try to cut the nails of the other quail. We'll see how that goes when we get to it... Luckily I have learned my lesson though, so next time we see that one of the quails has an overgrown beak we're taking it to the vets...

Snik the Snake

A couple days ago we found a snake in our basement. It isn't very long (probably about 20cm) and only a centimeter wide at its longest. Since it's winter, and it should have been hibernating, we thought that we would have to keep it and take care of it or it would starve to death. We put it into an aquarium and gave it a piece of pipe to hide in and went to the nearest pet store to get some food for it. They told us that we should get a mouse to feed it so it didn't learn to hunt and wouldn't bite us (I think we may have forgotten to mention that it was wild to begin with). The mouse was tiny, dead and frozen. They told us to heat it up in a warm pot of water before we fed it to the snake. First of all, ICK and second of all, it probably wouldn't even eat it because it is used to live animals. Instead we got some crickets, which is much more like the food it would get here in the summer. It was really cool watching the snake hunt because it gets really still and some people who saw it thought that it was dead. Except then it suddenly lunges forward and eats the cricket! Most people won't hold it, even when we assure them that even though it can hunt there's no way it's going to bite them. It feels really cool, almost like silk. I named the snake Snik, although so far the name isn't really catching and most people just call it "the snake".