Getting this off my chest!

[MuddyWitch]

To be fair to my OH, we had a deal when we married; I'd do the DIY, he'd cook. The only DIY I ask him to do is stuff I'm not physically capable of, such as banging fence posts in (I have arthritis), or needs two pleople.

He's not good in the garden either, BUT he loves weeding!

MW

[Millymollymandy]

Bresse chickens are fantastic Julie! They cost an absolute arm and a leg here (well you don't even see them in Brittany but I used to live in the dept where they came from ), so think of how much an organic free range bird costs, triple it and that's the price of a Bresse one. Maybe you could start selling them oven ready?

Edit to say that I'm talking about chicken as meat, not as the actual live birds, if you see what I mean.

[JulieSherris]

I know MMM! I first heard about Bresse birds from Camile - he has a trio I think & when I got our Marans last year, the guy there had a breeding trio too.

I've read about the way the birds are raised & it's quite involved - they spend the last few weeks in a darkened enclosed space - they are fed a low protein diet to encourage them to forage & are also fed a special milk-diet supplement.
I'm not going to go down that route, but once the girls are laying I will be hatching as many of their eggs as I can. The long term plan is to sell any hens at the bird sales for a higher price than my cross bred girls & have the roosters as table birds for us.
Most other roosters will get one chance at the bird sales - if they are not sold, they will be for the pot.

Off on a further tangent..... (it's ok, it was my post, so I'm allowed to hijack it ) the honesty stall is working out nicely - I had an order for 12 cabbage plants - yay! Problem is, I haven't got 12 to sell.......
So yesterday I did a bit of a deal at the local woodyard/garden centre/hardware store & bought 18 plants for 2 euros.... I am going to repot those & mix them with some of mine - the guy is paying 50 cents a plant, so I shall even make a profit!
Cheating? Oh yes!

[Millymollymandy]

Did you know that when the bird flu scare hit France and we were all 'supposed' to keep our chooks inside the Bresse ones were allowed to still free range? Otherwise they couldn't be sold as Bresse chicken with their appellation controlee (or whatever the label is for chook) and I think they are big business in exports. Yet other free range chook producers were going out of business.

By the way cheat away - everyone does it - we bought some small bale barley straw a few years ago and the next year when we got some wheat straw from someone else he said the guy who sold the barley straw was his brother in law, he had bought in a big round ball bale, rebaled it and sold it to us for a good profit! We found that really funny but we were happy as we got a good deal too and it's not always easy to get the small bales. We're about to buy some more from him!