Thursday, September 20, 2012

Ducks and Marmalade.

I hate change, especially when something gets changed when it worked well before the change. It might take me some time to do today's blog , as the format of Blog Spot has now been changed. We were given due warning and I suppose I should have looked at the proposed changes before it happened. I get comfortable with things and rarely do I see any benefits of New or Improved , this seems like change for changes sake, but no doubt I will get used to it, or not.

The first of the ducks are now in the freezer, only five got slaughtered, one had escaped it's run and taken it's self off to the  second flocks run, maybe it had sensed what was going to happen. As it turned out we would not have had room in the freezer for the the escape.We ate one over the weekend and it was beautiful and so tender.

 We have now bought a third freezer despite saying we would only need one, there are still nineteen ducks and seven chickens to be slaughtered over the next month. Next year we would hope to have more chickens for the freezer, it takes time to build up breeding stock, we are keeping two of the La Bresse pullets that we hatched and hopefully we have found a supplier for the cockerel who had imported eggs from France, with luck we should have good strong stock. It rather went against the grain to buy chicken at 15euros a time for Sunday dinner, I can buy a joint of Organic beef for less, but the price of  Organic chicken does reflect the true cost of production allowing for the heavy mark up of the supermarkets.

Inspired by someone else's blog I decided it was time to make marmalade, not orange marmalade but lime, this was a childhood memory for both of us, Roses Lime Marmalade, always reserved for the adults in the family, we suspect it was very expensive or it was decided that children would not like it, we were both in our late teens if not older before we tried it, although marmalade is not the easiest thing to make it is worthwhile, even though it is a two day process. The end result, seven jars of marmalade for the store cupboard.


At last some good news on the GM front. At last a long term study has been done on the safety of GM's and the use of Roundup. Instead of the twelve week safety assessment, a two year study has now been done and Peer reviewed, funded in part by the French Supermarket chain Carrefour. The outcome? GM maize causes tumours as does Roundup. This is a debate that I have been involved with and followed for twenty four years. Maybe now governments will stop issuing licences for  growing these poisons and withdraw the licences for allowing Roundup to be sold, but I very much doubt it, after all when you have a ex legal representative of Monsanto in charge of  the FDA in the USA, corruption will reign supreme.
RESOURCES: The new paper can be found here
http://research.sustainablefoodtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Final-Paper.pdf
Intro to key findings and related resources
http://research.sustainablefoodtrust.org    

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