I kept the belly of one side of our pork, and had a go at making a home-cured bacon. It turned out delicious!

Yesterday I showed a friend how to kill, pluck and clean a chicken.

Our missing hen returns with a pleasant surprise for us – four gorgeous little chicks!

A cheap and simple home-made chicken processing station. It also doubles as a very handy outdoor sink for washing vegetables, plant pots and tools.

A complete summary of the costs for our first foray into raising our own pigs for meat, from piglet purchase right through to slaughter and butchering.

The pigs finally came home from the butcher. We received back 74 kilograms of porky goodness per pig – that’s a lot of meat to have sitting in front of you!

The pigs have finally reached a good baconer size, and are ready to head off to the abattoir.

If you want to clear a large area of land with little effort, you can’t beat a pig tractor!

You get a lot of variations in the size, shape and colour of eggs between different breeds of chickens and ducks. There’s a fair bit of natural variation within a breed, and even with eggs from the same bird. Here’s a lineup of some recent eggs we’ve collected.

A little more unusual than chickens and ducks, geese can provide several useful functions in the garden if you have the space.