Thursday, September 1, 2011

Our roosters meet Hop

In an earlier post I said that we locked up six roosters in our coop.  Ready to be “Hopped”.  We have a landscape gardener, Lyn Eglinton, who is helping us turn our paddocks into “grounds”.  Her husband Hop is a retired farmer.  He helps her out with her various projects.  He often grumbles that he is working harder now that he is retired.

On the day, Hop turned up with an axe, a chopping block and a sack.  If you would prefer to maintain a separation between paddock and plate, now is the time to stop reading!

I wasn’t there, but I have a pretty good mental picture about what went down.  My wife climbed into the coop.  Grabbed the first rooster by the feet.  Passed it outside to Hop, while averting her eyes.  Thunk!  Next one.  Thunk!  Next one.  Thunk!  And so on.  I was at work dealing with other types of cutting edge technologies.  But I heard all about it when I got home.

The roosters ended up being ‘processed’ by Hop and returned to us in tidy freezer bags, destined to be Rooster Pot Pie, Roster Panang Curry and other culinary delights.

One lucky rooster with more brains than the rest escaped. Slipped right out of the door past the executioner.  Lynn and Hop ended up coming back for that one.  They liked the look of him.  They have even given him a name: Lord Montdore. He’s right at home in their garden now.  Apparently he marches up to their back door every morning and crows until he gets breakfast.  He even seems to have overcome his mistrust of Hop!

I gather it was one of those reality moments for my wife.  It’s quite a transition for her from the charming winter wonderland of Boston’s Beacon Hill to a muddy paddock in rural New Zealand, handing hapless roosters to happy Hop.

Six more roosters gone.  Three more roosters to go.

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