Viable Self-Sufficiency
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A lamb or kid need only hang for a day or two, but, in the case of a mutton carcass, as shown here, it needs to hang for at least 10-14 days in a cool dry place; the older the animal, the longer it needs. Not only does hanging result in a richer, more complex flavour, but it gives time for enzymes within the meat to soften the muscle fibres, and for connective tissue to relax, giving tenderness. In order for hanging to be successful, carcasses must have a good covering of fat; without this protective layer, meat may begin to deteriorate rapidly after a few days. The carcass doesn’t need to be refrigerated, but must be kept reasonably cool, so an unheated store room in winter is ideal. The environment in our store room is ideal for this – it’s to the north of our house, and the 2' thick stone walls ensure that the temperature remains fairly constant. In damp weather, a little mildew may appear on the carcass, but this is no cause for alarm – we simply wipe it off with a cloth moistened in vinegar.
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Butchery is fairly straightforward if you just break the carcass down into easily managed pieces. You can try fancy things like boning and rolling, but this isn’t strictly necessary. Any odds and ends that you’re unsure about can be minced ‒ minced mutton makes simply the best shepherd’s pies and Bolognese.
Disposing of odds and ends Just as in killing a pig, when it’s possible to use “all but the squeak”, so it should be possible to make full use of every part of the carcass of a sheep or goat. The liver and kidneys we’ve already mentioned. The heart, too, makes a tasty dish, or can be included in mince, where it gives an attractive speckled appearance. A quick flick through two recipe books on our kitchen shelf have turned up seven recipes for sheep’s heads (and a further 11 for tongues and brains), two recipes for hooves, and one for tails, so that’s that lot
dealt with. Use rams’ horns for shepherd’s crooks, obviously. The hide will make a rug, or slippers, or even a new skin for your banjo. Quite a bit of the intestines can be salted down for sausage skins, and the rest of the innards (together with the lungs and any other bits and pieces) can be fed to the dogs – there’s been a huge amount of interest recently in providing more natural diets for dogs and, not surprisingly, they do very well on it. This only leaves one thing: the blood. This should be sprinkled around your raspberry canes, where it’ll do a power of good. Now, when an inspector calls, you’ll be able to account for every part of every beast! (Or simply write ‘missing’ in the flock record book, like everyone else does…)
Cattle I’ve only slaughtered cattle on a couple of occasions, for the simple reason that we can’t afford to eat beef. We rely on the sale of our young cattle to cover the cost of all our dairy produce. However, there are occasions when we get a ‘poor doer’ – an animal that doesn’t thrive as it should, so can’t be sent to market with the rest – and these are the ones for home consumption. Killing and cutting up a beef animal is essentially the same as dealing with a mutton sheep, but on a much bigger scale. It’s not something you’ll want to undertake on your own, so enlist the help of a willing neighbour, even if only for safety reasons – you might easily be knocked down and injured by the thrashing hooves of a shot beast, and when there are knives and firearms involved, things could go badly wrong.