Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

A rollercoaster day! It began with us dispatching three of the turkeys for meat: we tend to dispatch at the start of December and then freeze the birds rather than producing birds that are 'fresh' for Christmas. In our experience the fact the meat has been frozen for a couple of weeks doesn't appear to make a difference to the taste. Doing it this way means we don't have to do them all at once (it's jolly hard work) and it means the birds don't get too large (people cannot fit them in their ovens if they get too big). Having been killed and plucked the birds are now hanging in our dedicated fridge where they will stay for a few days. 'Hanging' in this way tends to improve the flavour! The next stage is to eviscerate (remove the insides); wash; remove any last small (awkward) feathers and then freeze! We are now left with seven (not including Elizabeth) and a further three of those are to be dispatched in a week or so. The remaining four will, along with Elizabeth, become our breeding group for next year.
We have obviously chosen the 'best' ones to keep but 'our' best may not be the same as someone else's. Our male (Napoleon) was chosen purely on behaviour: he is the friendliest and most characterful of the five we had. He also happens to be the biggest and his plumage is the most colourful. The females we are keeping (three from a choice of five) are harder to choose: females don't tend to be as friendly or inquisitive as the males so don't tend to stand out as much. We are trying to make our decisions now by really watching them in the next few days. How our birds behave is a crucial factor: being 'small' smallholders and having livestock that has to mix, we really don't want any animals that show any anti-social behaviour at all.
As ever, it was sad to see animals go but even sadder was hearing a commotion outside at 1.30pm and on rushing out finding the remains of yet another chicken!! This time the fox had come into our top paddock, just metres from the house and snatched one of our Amber Rangers. VERY annoyingly we discovered that the fox scarer was off due to a fault that had turned off all power in the barn!!! It has to be said, we are slightly starting to change our minds about how foxes should be controlled: our losses this year are now well into double figures!!