Today is rabbit dispatch day. Rabbits are a pretty easy meat source for a smallholding farm. I remember many years ago reading a book from Rodale Press called “Stocking Up”, a book I still have by the way, in which they took you through all the pros and cons of raising different farm animals. Rabbits are the most efficient feed input to meat output farm creatures you can raise, a relatively easy meat source for the family freezer and meat that is lean and good for you too! So many years ago when Darrell and I were newly married over in Bend I decided to raise some rabbits. Where we lived on Terry Drive, Darrell had a big shop which actually had also served as a aeroplane hanger. We found a lady selling some of her old rabbit cages, bought the feeders and water bottles, found a couple of doe rabbits and a buck and we were off!
In no time at all we had baby rabbits and some folks we knew were requesting a rabbit now and then for their dinner table. Excellent! I could sell a few of our rabbits and they in turn would pay the costs for the ones we put in the freezer for us! “Sure!” I told them, and so my rabbit business began which in turn led to the beef and pork business following soon after! Well one person spoke to a friend who spoke to a friend and before I knew it I had pretty much sold all the rabbits I had raised for our freezer. Better get another couple of does I thought. So before long we had six does raising babies for us and I found myself butchering between eight and twelve rabbits almost every fortnight on a Tuesday then delivering said rabbits to my meat customers the following day. I have no idea of how many rabbits were raised that first year or the subsequent few years that followed but it was a LOT! Within the first year I paid for all the equipment and breeding stock plus put a tidy few dollars aside which bought a couple of cows for our herd. Yes, this rabbit business was booming!
As the demand for our rabbits increased I decided to cut back on my customer base so as to give myself a bit of a “rabbit butchering” break. I decided to raise my price per pound feeling sure there would be folks deciding to forgo a rabbit dinner or two, but no, that did not happen, the orders kept rolling in. The worse part of it all was that poor Darrell, whom I had initially started this whole rabbit raising endeavor for was not getting rabbit to eat! I would plan on setting aside a couple of rabbits for us on butchering day only to have a last minute request from a customer for a rabbit or two added to their order. Darrell seldom got the taste of one of our own home raised delicacies. Well this time is different. I made a promise to myself, and him, that there would be a goodly stock of rabbit in the freezer for us. Almost all of the ten I shall do this morning will end up in our freezer and subsequently on our dinner table!
England has a tremendous rabbit population. Not the little tiny cottontails that frequent our garden and farmyard here in Oregon, but big and chunky rabbits that actually makes a jolly good meal. Of course the rabbit I ate in England was not the one bought from the local butcher shop, the one hanging in his window, drawn but not dressed out. No indeed, the ones that graced my father and my table were ones that got knocked in the head by the car bumper as we were driving home from a Cash & Carry after stocking up on supplies for one of our little village shops. There was always a bag in our little van, one that was at hand should a wayward pheasant or rabbit happen to dash across the narrow country road as we were on our way home or off delivering groceries. Sometimes, yes dear reader I am sure you know what is coming next, my father would deliberately swerve to clip a cocky pheasant in the head with the bumper of the van. The following “thump!” would see him slamming on the brakes and me jumping out the door with the bag in my hand to quickly grab the stunned, deceased… or soon to be deceased… bird, stuff it in the sack, jump back in the van and off we would go. After a few days of hanging a nice pheasant dinner would be on the table. Of course at that time in my life I did not exactly know this was akin to poaching although from my dad’s demeanor I could tell what we were doing was not an acceptable practice but my goodness we had some tasty meals!
Now back to America and more recent times. Darrell and I had been over to the valley attending a car show and swap meet. This was when we still lived over in the Bend area of Oregon. As we were driving along the highway a short way outside of Salem and still a good ways from home, I noticed a rather fat looking nice Raccoon laying in the road, obviously only very recently stuck and killed by a zooming car. Now since the advent of raising rabbits I had also started to tan my own hides, beginning with rabbit and progressing to deer hides. I saw this raccoon and thought my goodness I would like a raccoon hide, so I slammed on the brakes, rapidly reversed the truck, jumped out and grabbed the beast and unceremoniously threw him in the back of our truck. Darrell, bless him, thought nothing of this eccentricity of mine but little did he know what lay in store. Yes dear reader, I am sure you know once again what is coming…
When we arrived home I climbed in the back of the truck to remove the raccoon and get ready to skin him out so his hide could be added to my “pickle pot”. But when I looked at him I realized he had only been knocked in the head! There was not a mark on him and obviously he had met his demise just minutes before we came along and retrieved him from the highway! As I skinned him out I was impressed with the amount of meat, good looking meat, he had on him. Now Darrell has eaten a lot of wild game in his life as a young lad from possum to squirrel to raccoon to beaver, this was a fine looking carcass and so I decided it would make a fine Sunday roast! Into the oven it went the following day albeit it did look rather odd, I probably should have cut off its tail when I skinned it out but it made a wonderful dinner and the raccoon pie I made the following day with the leftovers was divine!
I guess old habits die hard. “Waste not want not” as the old saying goes. Maybe the moniker that was subsequently attached to my name: “Road kill Rose” was destined from way back as a little girl driving around in an old little van with my father along narrow English country roads….
