Tuesday 25 March 2008

Bywyd a marwolaeth

Three little lambs went to slaughter this morning, and now I am salting the skins in preparation for tanning which we are going to try to do ourselves this time instead of sending them off as we've done in the past... If anybody has had any experience with tanning skins themselves before, please let me know as I think we may need lots of help and advice!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do you not get attached?

Anonymous said...

I mean, they're really cute, and you care for them. I'm not being critical, I just would think it might be kind of hard. At least at first.

Jessica at Bwlchyrhyd said...

It is hard. We don't give them names; that helps a lot. But given the choice between eating lambs that I raised, and that I know had a really good life, and eating lamb from the supermarket that I don't know anything about -- I'd rather eat my own.

Are you still vegan?

Anonymous said...

When you wrote 'three little lambs', I thought you meant the latest batch. Not so soon!
But obviously this was from last year...

Jessica at Bwlchyrhyd said...

Oh no -- they won't be ready until the autumn now! It's the ewe lamb from the first summer who got caught and had a lamb herself last year, and the two little ram lambs from last year.

Of this year's lambs so far, the first two are for the freezer, but the one that was born yesterday is a girl and, at a quick glance, I think she will be registrable, so she will be kept for breeding.

Anonymous said...

No, not still vegan. It's definitely far better eating food you raised/grew, no doubts about that.

Eigon said...

There's a website called Primitive Technology at http://www.primitiveways.com/
that gives instructions on things like tanning.

Jessica at Bwlchyrhyd said...

Thanks, that looks like a very interesting site -- but I don't think I am going to be using brains to tan my sheepskins! For starters, I don't get the brains back when the lambs are slaughtered...