From lflondon@worldnet.att.net Sun Sep 12 00:28:10 1999 Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 04:19:07 GMT From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." To: london@metalab.unc.edu Subject: Re: Hares On Thu, 9 Sep 1999 15:10:34 +0100, in alt.permaculture "Heather" wrote: > >Holly wrote in message < >>How do you clean them (goat skins) first? Just scrape with a sharp knife >etc? What do >>you use to cure them with? It isn't something I have ever tried but now >>you mention it........ >I'll dig out the curing recipe later and post that. >I try to skin the carcass as carefully as possible, if I want to actually >keep the skin. Other wise it just sort of gets yanked off and buried under >atree with all the head, feet and nasty internal bits. > A short bladed very sharp knife is best.Headless body hung upside down >from tree at a comfortable height. Then it's just a case of starting to get >the blade between skin and meat, as close to the skin as possible with out >nicking it. I use a stroking motion, pulling the skin back or down as I go. >This is all really hard to explain! You want to leave as much membrane, fat >,meat on the body. I leave cutting around the genitals to Mark - cos I'm a >wimp. Also you need to tie up the orifaces so nothing nasty spills on to >your meat when you gut it. >When it's off the body you can scrape off any bits you may have missed, use >any thing sharp - a tin can lid? Then you want to wire brush the flesh side >so that it breaks the surface a bit. Finally wash it with warm mild soapy >water and rinse. Leave it to drip dryish before putting it in the cure or >freezer. >It is by far best to get someone to show you this, but that's probably not >going to happen in this day and age.:-) When we had our first killing >session we were faced with 4 kids in one day to do ! And neither us nor our >neighbour who owned 3 of the goats had ever done it before. It took us 10 >hours to kill, gut, skin and cut up those goats. I must say our butchering >skills improved over the four bodies. It's amazing what you can do with a >very sharp knife on a caravan table. >Heather > > >