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  1. Ahab

    Simple electric netting question

    Ends of the fence should not touch; you don't want a complete circuit. A predator touching the fence and the ground completes a circuit--zaap.
  2. Ahab

    Ancona Ducks

    If anyone in midcoast Maine is looking for some Anconas this year, I'm way over-supplied on ducklings, after three enterprizing hens set up a guerrilla maternity ward in the raspberries. Skitterbugs everywhere.
  3. Ahab

    Vacuum Sealers

    I'm not sure who makes the Cabela's vacuum sealers, and don't know anyone who owns one. But I do have a few friends who use commercial sealers from www.thevakshack.com in their restaurants, for cooking sous vide. They like them a lot, and find their bags (which are FoodSaver compatible) much...
  4. Ahab

    Vacuum Sealers

    We've used a FoodSaver for years, and you have to spend a lot more money to get something better. Don't buy the precut bags; they're too expensive, and always the wrong size. Buy 11" and 8" rolls, and cut to size to fit the job. We don't usually freeze whole birds; too much air doesn't get...
  5. Ahab

    MUSCOVY MEAT!!!!

    It works fine on low-temperature cooking for small pieces of meat. I routinely do steaks and lamb chops this way, when it's too warm to fire up the wood stove (flash-brown over the fire, then into a low oven until 125F shows on the internal thermometer). For quick-and-dirty sous vide, I hold...
  6. Ahab

    MUSCOVY MEAT!!!!

    Sous vide is a great technique for tenderizing fibrous meats without overcooking. I tried a duck breast yesterday, about six hours at 135F, then flash-browned over a wood fire. Perfectly medium-rare, the fat nicely rendered, and the skin very crisp. Way more tender (from older ducks) than a...
  7. Ahab

    Thoughts on knitting mesh for tractor

    If you make the fence that surrounds your property predator-proof, it won't matter what you cover your tractors with. WIth a few loops of electric fencing on stand-off insulators, you could mesh the tractors with #15 bait-bag twine and be safe against anything this side of determined hawks. If...
  8. Ahab

    Oats: Crimped or whole?

    Fast-forward 10 months, and my Anconas happily eat whole oats, a supplement to their Flockraiser, fed free-choice. The oats go in a separate trough in late afternoon, as much as they'll eat in 15 minutes or so. They need access to plenty of grit when eating whole grains.
  9. Ahab

    Using a bullet instead of a hatchet?

    I second the recommendation fir a meat cleaver. Far more accurate and easily handled than an ax (and I've split 4-6 cords a year for the past 40, so I can use an ax), and altogether handier for many butchering chores. Find a good carbon-steel cleaver in almost any decent junk store, or buy one...
  10. Ahab

    Ancona Ducks

    My batch of Cackle anconas look remarkably similar, including a mostly-black with a green bill that I can't bring myself to cull because she's the most innovative and inventive forager, and appears to be the brains of the outfit.
  11. Ahab

    quick and dirty? solo "doing in"

    Quote: That's the way they did it on the farm my dad grew up on in TN. Grab it by it's head, swing it around, then pop up against a tree or even in the air if you're good, sort of like cracking a whip. My dad has been gone since the 70's but I still remember how he'd roar with laughter at the...
  12. Ahab

    Last minute questions on dressing ducks

    Another Waldo Countian? The Chinese leave the neck on because they typically hang them in a vertical duck roaster. Unless you have one of these, I'd take off the neck, just as you'd do a chicken. Leave the neck-skin flap on the carcass, and slice off the little pea-size oil glands embedded in...
  13. Ahab

    Butchering ducks - Pin Feather question

    If making confit seems a chore (it isn't that hard, and well worth it), and turning prime duck leg-thighs into essentially potted meat seems a culinary sacrilege (it does to me, anyway), then why not roast the thigh/leg combos separately? Freeze them in pairs in a vacuum-seal bag, with or...
  14. Ahab

    Ancona Ducklings

    Quote: Sorry. I haven't tried. Perhaps after the hurricane this coming weekend, I'll unlimber the camera.
  15. Ahab

    Ancona Ducklings

    I got Anconas from Cackle in May, and am completely satisfied. They truly don't have those awful hierarchical battles that other ducks we've had seem to have. Though there is one who thinks she's smarter than everyone else, and leads adamantly from behind. As in, New Food. You go eat it and...
  16. Ahab

    The ULTIMATE list of DUCK Treats and Supplements...

    Both I, and the ducks, are wondering about mountain ash berries. We both spend a great deal of time looking up at the interesting orange things in the adjoining trees, and wonder if the cedar waxwings are cutting-edge culinarians, or simply immune to something duck-specifically lethal.
  17. Ahab

    Special Maine Treat!!!

    Quote: I assume she means the internal roe, known as coral, and not the external eggs. Here in Maine, a "berried" lobster is strictly illegal. Though why a caterer should be feeding lobster coral to her chickens and not as part of a compound butter to her clients is beyond me. In the right...
  18. Ahab

    Butchering ducks - Pin Feather question

    A final down- and pin-feather removal trick gleaned from Holderread's book: put a little rubbing alcohol in a jar lid, touch it off, and pass the carcass through the flames. Worked great for me recently. My grandmother used to do something similar when I was a boy, but that was 50 years ago and...
  19. Ahab

    Waterer and Feeder for Ducks? What do you use?

    I use a Little Giant 2550 automatic waterer mounted to a post I can move around in their pasture (hooked to a garden hose, a pressure reducer, and 50 feet of 1/4-inch tubing), and there are three wading/dabbling pools made from the cutoff bottoms of big plastic barrels scattered around in shady...
  20. Ahab

    The ULTIMATE list of DUCK Treats and Supplements...

    I tried out green peas on the ducks--small quantities at first, just a few spent plants, to see how they'd go. They stripped the stalks of foliage, and expertly shucked the peas. Now they line up against the garden fence in the afternoon, a dozen amber bills poked through the gap between the...
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