A neighbor called yesterday to get advice on killing chickens, and I was reminded of my post of a few weeks ago, in which I (pretty unsuccessfully) tried to figure out the difference between the local, born-and-raised-here farmers, and us transplants. This woman has thirteen meat birds, and they’re getting to be mature and are ready to go in the freezer, and she’d been calling different people to try and get an idea of what to do and how to do it. A lot of the transplanty types, and a lot of books written for newcomers to farming, said that you must either sever the jugular or stick the brain, but never, never chop their heads off, as it will make for lower quality meat. The oldtimers she talked to all said either a) “Just chop its head off, honey!” or b) wring their necks.

I am squarely in the head-chopping-off camp. For one thing, it’s easy and fast. I’ve done it both ways, and find it horrible to watch an animal slowly bleed to death. And for another thing, that thing about the meat quality is absolute bullshit. There is no discernible difference. And, at least with the brain-sticking routing, it’s really easy to screw up, and that’s pretty much the most awful thing ever. I say that from experience.

So why do the new-age transplant types take what should be a really simple operation and turn it into a difficult, easily messed up ordeal, full of long, drawn out worrying and angst? It’s never easy to kill something. Why make it harder?

On our way home from the beach we stopped to visit a couple of small dairies. The first was Goat Lady outside Greensboro. They were having a farm open house, which I guess they do a couple of times a year, and we really enjoyed ourselves. We got a nice look at their milking parlor, cheese kitchen, and goat barn, and came away with a renewed sense of what we’re doing and how it can work on this property. Steve Tate was kind and helpful, although a little harried with all they had going on—-the open house seems to be very popular! There was quite a crowd when we arrived, and he said that most of the people had left already!

The next morning we went to the morning milking at Celebrity Dairy (thanks, amy, for helping set that up!). We didn’t have a chance to meet the owners, bur the woman doing the milking was very friendly and informative, and although Celebrity is a considerably larger dairy than we’re planning, it was still enormously helpful to see how things were put together.

So we came home inspired and with a whole new vision of the farm.

Something got Mus Mus last night. We think maybe a rat. There were signs of a struggle, and blood. We’re all heartbroken—he was the sweetest, most loving and affectionate little guy, and we’re going to miss him.

I think it was a year ago today that we brought him home.

Isn’t this a beautiful piece?

Here’s today’s cake in progress, and a picture of the flowers I picked to decorate it with. It was a pretty easy cake, and the bride and groom couldn’t have been any nicer. The groom, a stained glass artist, made me a gorgeous stained glass piece—I’ll try to get a picture of it tomorrow in the light.

I’ve got the end -of-vacation blues. Bad. I’m not even sure why, as I’m totally in love with my life right now. It probably doesn’t help that I’m bone tired, or that I have a wedding cake to bake today for delivery tomorrow. Whatever it is, I hope I can shake it off and enjoy this gorgeous autumn we’re having.

This is a picture of one of the four screen porches our beach house had. DH had a fire in the fireplace nearly every night we were there—he went around the island collecting cedar and gnarly oak logs in his bicycle basket. There’s nothing like the perfume of a cedar fire. The temperatures were delightfully cool in the evenings, perfect for sitting around roasting clams.

We had a wonderful time on Ocracoke, and it was really, really hard to leave, but it’s great to be home, too.

Bernard and I came down with a cold the first day down there—actually a relapse of the cold we’d both had the week before we left, I think—and so we were pretty low energy for most of the week, but still had a great time hanging out together.

The weather was perfect, and our house was a dream, and the company was fantastic, and the seafood was delicious. I’ll post some more pictures tomorrow when I’m not so exhausted!