It is zero f here right now just as still as could be, wish it was daylight it feels wonderful out there. Has been 20 and windy and snowy the last few felt awful , but with out the wind even -20 feels good to me . The air is just so fresh and clean and when it gets back up to twenty above and sunny it will be t-shirt weather.
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Well, to chim in to the weather reports, l can say for the first time since meny years we are haveing the a decent winter. For now. The snow hasnt yet fallen (its draught actualy-noting fell from the sky for more thain a month now) but the ground is in permafrost mode, wich is great for soil and all the fruit trees to rest and prepare for a good yeld next year.
The butchering days start at this point. The flyes are dead so meat can be hang in the outside to cool and rest.
Just helped the neighbour slaughter a horse this morning, our 2 250kg pigs are on the list for somewhere in the beginning of January.
Last year we had so much problems, temps at about 20c in the end of december. The meat didnt dry well…
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Wow! [quote=“KristijanL, post:145, topic:2773”]
helped the neighbour slaughter a horse this morning
[/quote]
Over here slaughtering a horse for meat is about the opposite of Europe’s condemning us for using corn to power our cars or heat our houses
My horses were just “pets” and I had to give them away so that I didn’t know how the rest of their lives played out. I would not have any problem eating horse meat, if I don’t have to be a part of it’s death. I eat most kinds of meat, except “snakes”. Not that hungry yet. TomC
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Garry T glad your daughter is ok, i live in michigan i have seen it 60 f below zero wind sheilds last a few days.dont like it that cold myself, the less damp and windy it is the better.Take Care. stay Warm.
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I am in the horse breeding buisness for only about 5 years now, as long as l know my wife, but her family was the only one far around to own horses, most others wehe useing cows and oxes for work animals.
The point is, I dont know why, but here no one uses (or used-work horses are rare now days) stalions for workhorses. Just mares. Male horses were sometimes castrated, but the the advantige of mares over castrats is obvious-mare gives you new horses.
Aniway, young male horses still have have such a small price here, farmers are forced to slaughter them while young. We are no exeption, and l cant say l feel too bad about it, a young horse steak is something to feed angels with…
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Ha! Ha! Glad to see canadian GaryT had a little bit of T-quoting without F or C designation, Canadian-revenge.
The same one inch of snow with 20’sF nights and 32F days that MichealG had been having. Been nice to get rid of the squish, squish for a crunch, crunch.
That 32F days been the bugger-do with now freezing rain on top.
My experience is 28F to 32F is slimy snotty roads compacted snow and ice. Bad, hard driving, and walking.
Mid-20’sF and below the sticky ice. Easy driving, rural. Nasty slick at urban four-way, six-way intersections with intersection stopped running vehicles blowing down ice surface slick wet melting.
THIS the kinds of driving we have depended decades on studded snow tires for.
Ha! WA State highways and some counties now more and more using calcium chloride to show us obstinate’s the un-need for these studded snow tires now.I did try some studless Noikian’s. Other use Bizzaks. Less expensive studded still real-world here work better.
At least studded snow tires pavement wearing is not killing the bridges and other public infrastructures. And our studded snow tire are not short-life killing off $100’s of millions in vehicles use-life’s.
Ha! And for these conditions slime-snot walking the studded footwear $50 strap-on’s do work better than the $20 spiral wire Yak types.
J-I-C Steve Unruh
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People in most parts of our country avoid horse meat, but in the area I live it´s rather common.
For several hundered years horses where used in nearby Falu copper mine. They were sent down young in ropes never to see daylight again. A lot of slaughtered horses led to a lot of local dishes, some still popular. The most famous one is a sour smoked sausage made in the same old local factory for hundereds of years, and still is. It´s delicious.
A couple of years after I met my wife, 25 years ago, we slaughtered her riding horse she had during her teens. We ate a lot of horse for a while. Wife´s parents also had cattle and sheep. Our children always asked what´s on the dinner table by names, Philippa, Johan or Pelle?
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Here at 12959 we haven’t had more than 2"-3" of snow yet this year. Low temp 20-25 degrees F. We’ve been fortunate. Looks like that could change big time next week. Oh, yippee???
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I guess if I can eat racoon, beaver, muskrat, bear, deer, moose I could eat horse. Sorry trigger.
I forgot partridge, ducks, pheasant and wild turkey (not at all like farm raised, they have a strong taste and the drumsticks are tough as heck).
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“horse steak is something to feed angeles” !!! I am old and can remember when a cow steak was that good. Now, the feed lots force feed cows corn which is toxic to their system but puts on weight FAST. Young folks don’t know what a good T-bone or ribeye steak should taste like.
“for several hundred years horses were used in nearby Falu copper mine”. To me that is a sad story, but it explained something that I have often wondered about. We have a large population of people from Sweden in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan ( about 100 miles north of me in particular, Houghton, Mi ) The Swedes must have heard about the copper mining in that area and seeing they had experience, they moved there.
“A couple of years after I met my wife-----” Your wife must have been a lot harder person ( interpreted to mean a “good farmer” ) than I. I did raise beef cows for a time, and we kept one for our own use, but I sent it out to be butchered. As far a the grandkids knew all the cows went to market. They never put together that for over a year, those hamburgers were— old “Blacky”. TomC
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Haha you made me laugh JO 
I think this is a right kind of thinking to present to our children. You dont have to be a grass and bark eating vegan to like animals. Its just the circle of life and the food chain that we cant (and shuldnt) distrupt.
We allso have animals with names and l wuldnt have problems eating most of them, althugh there were some exeptions.
Actualy, while on this subject, l was just thinking today what our peacock Vinko wuld taste like
You mentioned your “girls” do some horse rideing. Do you owe horses too?
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Tom,
I agree on beef. The sad thing thats happening here is there most farms in our contry are small, 2-5 cows farms, fed with high quality mountain hay. The meat is premium quality, so is milk.
But! A few years back the authoritys put a stop in home slaughter. You have to pay a lot to get your cow butchered, so most just sell them and buy beef in the store, or not buy it at all.
So, in short, what happens, our premium meat gets sold in Germany and Austria, milk goes to ltaly for great sums of money, and we inport sh*t from Hungary and other countrys.
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Hi Kristijan,
Do I understand you correctly that the average citizen cannot slaughter their own animals or is that just if you are reselling to the public?
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Thank you Kristijan for the insight to your country. I have to conclude that you are limited to small farms because of the lack of “good” land? In my life, farming in Wisconsin, has gone from family farms milking 12 to 20 cows and planting 30 to 50 acres of grain for “cash” to commercial farms “milking” 800 to 2,000 cows a day, 3 and even 4 times a day. ( when is a poor cow suppose to sleep?) For every milk cow you have to have another cow to make up for the “dry” cows and heifers. That doubles the number of cows and means lots of feed. Again, they have found that instead of feeding cows hay, they have better milk fat if they feed the cows corn silage. The big farms are almost fighting to buy, rent, or what ever, land to grow feed on. What does this have to do with woodgas. The farms have made it so lucrative renting out land, that I can give up farming, rent my land out, and PLAY WITH WOODGAS!!! Just a shame it happened so late in life when " what once I use to do all day long, now takes me all day long to do once". TomC
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We run some beef cattle here, and used to take one to the butcher shop now and then, but recently my wife prefers to buy from the grocery store only the “cuts” of beef she/we like. For a while we had three freezers running and sucking lots of electricity, and each one had packages of UFOs (Unidentified Objects) near the bottom. Things like tongue, tripe, oxtails, livers, hearts, etc. After building my ground mount solar arrays, I gave away the chest freezer to save energy. Now the two remaining freezers are so full there isn’t even room for a Pita Bread!
On the day after election day, my neighbor was in a bad mood. One of his bull calves had escaped again, and would not cooperate in getting back behind the fences, so the neighbor shot the animal. He “field dressed” it on the spot, and offered us a hind quarter.
Here is a photo of some of it BBQing in my copy of a Whitlox wood forge. It was tasty, but tough as Jerky, so we ate some, and cut the rest up into small pieces and made it into Goulash in our slow cooker. Also makes good Chili. If you haul an animal to the butcher shop, they hang it to age and that makes it somewhat tender. Old cows are usually converted into Steakburgers. I remember seeing speciality butcher shops in France that sold Horsemeat. For a while, excess horses from Texas were exported to Mexico for slaughter, but I believe the treehuggers and animal rights activists have put an end to that.
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Pepe,
No one is alowed to slaughter any animal at home. But the authoritys look trugh their fingers for small animals, like poultry and rabbits, and pigs (pig slaughter day is one of 2 unaficial “holidays” of the year, the other is Martins day in wich grape juice is sayd to transform to wine).
Horses are slaughtered in secret, but cattle is wery strict with high penaltys so rarely anyone risks it. Cows have more paperworks thain people… inspectors search our stables almost monthly to asure every animal is evidented.
Tom,
You are correct. We live in a hilly country, great for vineyards, not great for farming. To speak for my self, we owe about 40 acres of forests, 12 acres of tractor workable land and about 12 acres of steep hayfealds (+about 25 acres that neighbours almost beg us to cut) that need to be cut by a walk behind cutter and dryed by hand. This supports our litle farm of 6 cows and 4 horses + all their young.
You are a smart man. Here older people worked so hard in their life, work is what keeps them up in the old days. Take work away from them, they are usualy dead within a few years. Seems they just cant relax.
Ray,
Thats true. I hang a peace of horses back in a cold room for 2 weeks last year, it was the best and softest meat l have ever eaten. This culd sell for big money, (aged beef is priced at about 50$/pound here) but here are those nasty inspectors agen…
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No, I don’t. Never did, unfortunately.
Girls did some horse riding on borrowed horses. They are grown up now. Moved out. My wife is the only one who has real experiance of horses and most critters from when growing up. Her folks are old now. The only animals slaughtered now at their place is moose (and some roe deer). Every fall. Father in law still hunts. I don’t.
I’m brought up with small scale forestry. And wood. Always wood. TImber from time to time. I was only six years old when I managed the same old Fergie by myself. My father crawling in the snow hocking up the chains to the timer and me at wheel.
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I did that with my snow sled. After sliding down the hill. Yes it made my tounge bleed. We had French fries that night for dinner, salt, catsup on my tounge. OUCH! Things you do when you are a kid.
Bob
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In winter country everyone learns that, most by example, only have to see it once, and the lesson is obvious. I’m sure my daughter and her brother are cured of that curiosity for life. 
The kids took it pretty well, no trauma, and as the saying goes, now they know… 
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Ontario has imposed something similar but not gone that far yet. You can slaughter your own at home for private use but not sell it. To sell you must have it done at a slaughterhouse that meets all the new standards. Of course there are fewer and fewer of those and they are larger and larger… We don’t have land for that so it does not affect us. There is a fair amount of un official trading that goes on though… Grass fed beef is a yummy thing. On the weather side of life -9 Celsius this morning, total snow about 20 cm on the ground. Winter was slow showing up but seems determined to stay now.
David Baillie
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