Our free range meat chickens

Mechelse koekoek. 

History: During the first half of the nineteenth century, the large clean-legged cuckoo chicken named the Flemish Cuckoo, was popular amongst farmers throughout Dendermonde and Mechelen in Belgium. As large Asiatic breeds were imported to France, Belgian farmers crossed these asiatic birds to their Flemish Cuckoo, creating the Mechelse Koekoek. The single-combed Mechelse Koekoek chicken was also crossed with the Bruges Game chicken, and the resulting variety became known as the "Turkeyhead Malines".

Up until the World Wars in Europe, the Malines chicken was considered one of the best meat producers, and was exported around Europe and to North America. Today the Mechelse Koekoek is rare outside of Belgium.

Mangaliza pigs

The pig is one of the oldest established animals in husbandry, having been domesticated some 8,000 years ago in Asia, from where it was brought to Europe.

And the Mangalitsa pig, (Mangalitza in German & Mangalica in Hungarian) is one of the oldest European breeds. Breeding started started in the 1830s in the Austro-Hungarian Empire after Archduke Joseph Anton Johann received some Sumadija pigs from a Serbian prince, and crossed them with Bakony and Szalonta pigs. The resulting Mangalitsa “curly-hair pig” was initially reserved for the Habsburg Royalty, but became so popular because of its great taste that by the end of the 19th century it was the main breed in Europe.

Many of the pigs were herded from Burgenland (part of Hungary until 1921 – now an Austrian province) to the slaughter houses in Vienna, just like the cattle were herded to the slaughter houses in the Midwest. Fattened to 250-300 kg (550 to 650 lbs), most of the meat was used for speck and lard, but the now famous “Stelze” (pork shank) was introduced at that time as well.

The Mangalitsa pig was honored by the great composer Johann Strauss II in 1885 his Operetta “The Gypsy Baron”, in which the pig breeder Zsupan declares that he lives for pigs and speck – but has no time for intellectual activities.

But with changing conditions in animal husbandry after World War II, when tastes changed in Western Europe, and Hungarian Agriculture was collectivised, the breed rapidly declined and was replaced with leaner  and more rapidly growing breeds. By the end of the 1970s Mangalitsa pigs in Austria could only be found in National Parks and Zoos, and less than 200 breeding sows remained in Hungary.

blond sow

But by the mid 1980’s the Mangalitsa Renaissance got started in Austria & Hungary, and the Kobe Beef of pork has made a huge comeback since then. By 1994 the Austrian breeders Association had 43 members, and by today there are over 80 breeders in Austria. In Hungary in the meantime there are over 10,000 breeding sows again, over 90% of which are the Blonde Mangalitsas, and thanks to Isabell and Christoph Wiesner out of the small village of Wischathal in Lower Austria, there are now Mangalitsa breeders in most European countries, as well as the United States and Russia.

piglets  are born with strips. 

Many fine restaurants in Europe are now serving the delicious Mangalitsa meat again, and demand in the U.S. is rapidly increasing since the pig was introduced here to the gourmet market a few years ago.

From New York to San Francisco fine restaurants are serving great Mangalitsa dinners, and we see the demand for these products increasing rapidly as more pigs become available.  

The breed did not get officially recognized until 1927.

Sanne milking goats

we have at the minute 4 goats, 3 milking goats and 1 billy goat.

This is our billy goat apply called "Billy" 

 this is "Ging" our frst goat born here on the smallholding.  

Flemish Giant rabbits

The smallholding

Cheese and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)

Last sunday was my first delivery for Ging`s Artisan Goat`s Cheese- CSA in Brussels.  

For the past few months I`ve been working hard to choose which ones to present and loving every minute of it. 

I finally came up with these beauties for the first delivery. 

- a fresh goats cheese with honey from our own hives ( sadly no picture) 

- a fresh goat's cheese with apricot and sage ( top left) 

- a hard cheese with cloves and cumin ( 3 photo, top left) 

- a fresh aged, white moulded goats cheese, called "oh, so Billy" ( 3 photo, top right) 

- a fresh aged,  charcoal ( charcoal, made here on the smallholding)  goats cheese. ( bottom photo) 

My passion for making traditional, artisan goat`s cheeses: 

I am passionate about my artisan cheese`s, to me it is very important to know were all my produce comes from and what impact if any, it has on the enviroment. With these thoughts in mind it took me down a road to make my own cultures and rennet for the cheese`s, so I could truely say everything in the cheese making is natural and made here on the smallholding. After a far bit of research I discovered it was possible to make a culture for cheese making with ant eggs !!! yes ant eggs and I make the rennet with nettles. 

Collecting the ants eggs and how I make the culture: 

well ofcourse true me style, I had to go hunting for the ant eggs, after a bit of trial and error, digging holes all over the place, I discovered that I only needed to move a animal feed bin in the field and there they were, lots a ants running around like mad trying to move there eggs, I just assisted and took about a teaspoon of them. 

now here are the steps to make my culture ( it also works for making yoghurt ) 

- I started with about 125ml of milk

- I put the ant eggs in a little piece of sterile cheese cloth and I tied it so the eggs wouldn`t mix freely with the milk. 

- I slowly heated the milk up to 25 celcius and then put the milk into a thermos flask to keep the heat constant. 

- After about 5 hours, you will see that the milk has set, it looks a bit like a soft jelly, then it`s good to go. 

- strain the eggs in the cheese cloth out of the milk  and... 

hey presto, we have a culture for the cheese  (yoghurt). 

I use around 60ml of this mother culture in 1 litr of milk to make a new batch of culture and freeze it for further use in cheese making. 

Workshops

I organise different types of workshops in the small holding. Follow Love & Living the Good Life at Facebook to see the upcoming dates. 

• Goats cheese making (hard and soft)
• Sausage making
• Bread making
• Edible walks
• Sewing classes
• Five course dinners with local produce  - most of which is from the smallholding. 

We keep goats in the smallholding and the milk from the goats we use for making the cheese in the cheese making workshops. I find it intruiging to be as self sufficient as possible and hope also to inspire other people to learn more about how to make cheese at home - even people that don't keep goats themselves. The workshops include a lunch with a selection of my soft and hard goats cheese. More information on the other workshops to come...

About me

A few years back we left the rat race to set up a smallholding and to do our best to be self sufficient. We grow and rear all our own produce and try to revive old lost crafts.