Dove, love…
One holiday season as a single parent, I lacked money and only had enough for one “nice” gift for my daughter. After some thought about what sort of present might be enjoyed throughout the year, that year I put up a bird feeding station, complete with mesh walkabout tray lower down the pole for the groundfeeder-sort of birds…all this set up right outside the picture window just by our kitchen/dining table. I’d seen a lot of birds there passing by, and when we put food out, it attracted a lot of lovely “regulars,” especially doves. Their tray was situated right about eye level for us when seated at the table inside, and it was so beautiful having so much winged life only a couple feet away.
This became a favorite place for my daughter and me to get up close and personal with our feathered friends…she’s loved birds ever since.
I especially loved the doves, and their nightly cooing. Wild doves will always be a favorite part of my gardens.
Birds have always been a part of my life in some way. Though I’ve had caged birds before…parakeet, cockatiel (briefly), canaries, finches, I prefer seeing them be able to fly or roam freely.
I think a lot about raising some chickens. And some guineas, and a pair of peafowl, some ducks, maybe a pair of geese…? The list fluctuates, but figures in largely to our Next Phase of homesteading beyond this one. Most of those are nixed from this locale due to zoning regulations, though if we’re here long enough, we’ll likely take those regulations head-on, or “interpret them loosely.” (Goodbye chicken…hello “Florida Ground Parrot”…ha!)
Part of my love of birds may be genetic. My maternal Grandpa loved birds. Some of my best memories (from guess where?) spent at my Grandma and Grandpa’s house were sitting with them during breaks or at the end of the day on the back porch, watching the birds go about their business. There were mockingbirds, blue jays, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, varieties of woodpeckers, thrashers, all the varieties of sparrows and small songbirds, cardinals, bluebirds, robins, and the hummingbirds that came to sip from the heavy trumpet vines that engulfed the T-post at the near end of the clothesline. Their songs were recognizable, too, and even if you couldn’t see them, you often knew they were there…the bobwhites, mourning doves, meadowlarks, redwinged blackbirds, crows, whippoorwills.
For some, birdwatching is a pleasant diversion, and for others, a passionate obsession. For my Grandpa, it was a part of his rural world (the one he chose after retirement), and he “knew” each bird whose territory he shared, and enjoyed their daily antics and personalities. My grandparents seldom fed the birds. They provided for them in different ways. They would never disturb a nest, not even an abandoned one, and left different types of trees and shrubs intact because they knew which birds would be returning to rear their families there…and planted others they knew would be cover for bird feasts and fortresses.
Sitting there as a young girl with my Grandpa, swinging my bare feet back and forth from my perch on the hollow metal folding lawn chair, the plastic webbing crosshatching its design against the backs of my thighs, we were content without much conversation. Grandpa never was much of a talker, but loved having us girls around and just being. We spent a lot of time sitting on that back porch at dusk, in those flimsy lawn chairs. It was there he taught me not to shy away from the dirt daubers (that look a lot like wasps, and that we pronounced “dirt-dobblers”) or granddaddy longlegs spiders. And it was there I once asked him to tell me about his own father.
It turns out my great-grandpa was an interesting man, and one of the things he mentioned about him was that Great-Grandpa Wright kept pigeons.
Kept pigeons? My interest was piqued. Tell me more, Grandpa…
He spoke of his father with much tenderness and respect, and the details of the pigeon-raising are lost to me now, though I did listen intently. It turns out he raised a lot of them. I thought that was the coolest thing I’d heard…both my grandparents were beyond their animal-husbandry days and had downsized along the most simplistic lines, which I thought was a total waste of good land and B-O-R-I-N-G as a child. They had once done some dairying (by hand) in bygone days, including working the fields and gardens with mules, and had chopped cotton for years in their own childhoods. Obviously they had no nostalgia for those particulars left to extend into my own childhood. Finding out that someone in my family had raised any sort of animal was sort an affirmation of my own interests.
It wasn’t until a year or so ago that I thought much about my forbear’s pigeon-raising, till I had a conversation with Jack about his mom and his childhood years in Havana. It seems that despite her busy schedule as a nurse, his mother kept a lot of plants in the walled sideyard of their concrete-and-stucco home, but in addition to that, she kept birds. I was trying to figure out what sort of birds they were, since Jack knew them as “palomas.” He said she kept anywhere from 3 to 15 at any given time, and would use them as a meat bird in soup, especially when anyone would get sick with a cold. They would sometimes lay eggs that would hatch, fledge, and become adults. They were quiet, mostly white but sometimes bicolored, lovely, and had a soft song.
Sopa de Paloma is what he called the soup, and said a lot of people kept palomas in their backyards in Cuba to supplement their meals. The soup would be made like a standard chicken soup of that area, simmering the carcass and meat with salt, garlic, onion, celery, spices, starchy vegetables like potatoes or malangas, sweet potato, calabaza/pumpkin, yuca, and green plantains. He still swears this soup is more healing that most medicines 🙂
It turns out Palomas are pigeons, and his mom kept them in a long, divided rectangular cage raised off the ground about table-height. They were shaded by the wall and the trees. The droppings would fall through the wire bottom to the plants below, and there were nesting boxes within. Everything worked simply and symbiotically, and was efficiently situated…permaculture before it was a term. Each day when she was home, she would open the door and they’d free range around the walled yard among her plants till she put them back into the cage at the end of the day…she’d trimmed the flight feathers of one wing for each bird.
I asked Jack whether he was sure they were pigeons, or doves, since their description sounded more to me like doves, and this led us both to go online to try to determine what the difference between a pigeon and a dove might be. It turns out they are basically different sizes of the same bird…the doves are the smaller sort and the pigeons are the larger. That’s the short and dirty explanation, though I’m sure experts can go into better detail. Their names in other countries are interchangeable, and they belong to the same “family.”
I’ve been pretty amazed at how Jack’s mom managed to grow so much for herself right in her own backyard, and doves/pigeons are no exception. Jack and I began asking ourselves if this bird could be the exception to the “agricultural animal” umbrella term in our zoning exclusions, and if we might have some “pet” pigeons/doves for our own culinary use.
If we would be raising our own ducks, chickens, geese, why not our own dove/pigeons?
Well, it’s not a popular food these days, but that can’t be said for every area of the world, nor every era. Most people think of pigeons being nasty city-dwelling disease-carriers, and if you’ve seen city pigeons, they do seem to “be what they eat.” But perhaps therein lies the assumption that they’re unfit…clearly animals raised in natural ways or those in the wild are nutritionally and healthwise superior. Can our tastes adjust to the “peasant foods” of our more rural ancestors, even to the degree where we’ll eat pigeon? As we look for affordable options for the livestock portion of the homestead, could these be among other humble foods considered the poor man’s feast? Pigeon, to me, sounds a lot more appealing than the proverbial “four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie.”
Ask dove hunters..there’s not much more than a mouthful to be garnered from the cooked end product, but that doesn’t stop hunters every year from bringing them home and thoroughly enjoying them. A pigeon is a bigger version of dove. The meat is said to be dark and flavorful, and to some tastes this means ” gamey.” This is often minimized by marinating, wrapping with a bacon or substitute bacon product, and grilling or cooking just till done.
Jack said in Cuba, homegrown pigeons are fed grains and allowed to free-range in vegetation, and housed in simple cages such as his mom’s. He believes they were used for making rich soupstocks, utilized whole-carcass, meat and all.
In some places in the world (including some places in the U.S.), young pigeons are harvested after having grown in all their feathers a few days before they’re able to fly, about day 25-30, and are considered a delicacy…squab. At that stage they have only been fed crop-milk from their parents, and have not eaten independently.
I’m not advocating for or against raising pigeons and doves, but we certainly will be investigating this as a supplemental food source for ourselves, especially since Jack and I both seem to come from lineages that utilized these birds in former days. We may very well decide to keep some and see how they do…Cuba’s a semi-tropical climate, as is ours, so I imagine they’d do fine here.
I did find some recipes online for dove and pigeon, several of which sounded delicious…pigeon soup, pigeon pie, grilled, casseroled. It appears to be a food that is considered a hearty “peasant food” in many cultures worldwide.
Inexpensive, easy to raise, beautiful to watch, and musical to listen to…
an asset to the backyard homesteader and larger rural farm alike?
It’s a thought…
The only problem might be how to resist making every one of them a pet instead of dinner 🙂
Hello there, folks –
it’s bizarrely fortuitous that thebackforty should put up this post; as only yesterday evening I watched a fascinating TV programme (& TV is a rare treat, for me!) which I suspect will put pigeon – & especially pigeon pie – firmly on the menus of many restaurants throughout the UK.
I’m a smallholder/homesteader in South West Wales, UK. Our organically-managed 36-acre farm is tucked into the side of a valley of ancient, mixed-deciduous woodland between the majestic Preseli Mountains & beautiful Cardiganshire coast. We breed British Toggenburg dairy goats & currently care for a herd of around 100 (30 milkers + followers); have a modest flock of Greyface Dartmoor-crossed sheep; poultry (hens, bantams & ducks); Welsh Cob & Shetland ponies; three magnificent Maine Coon cats & a mischievous Border Collie pup.
Anyway – grabbing a cuppa before heading back out into the ‘Maternity Ward’ (we’re right in the thick of kidding) I took a break to watch what little was left of imaginative chef Heston Blumenthal’s ‘Medieval Feast’ programme. Famous for his world-renowned top Michelin-starred ‘Fat Duck’ restaurant, he’s been exploring ancient culinary traditions with the determination to recreate as many classical dishes as possible – from Roman through to more recent times.
So when I caught your phrase about ‘four & twenty balckbirds baked in a pie’ it immediately reminded me of what Mr Blumenthal achieved – for he recreated exactly that dish…..albeit using pigeons (blackbirds are fast becoming an endangered species in the UK; & it’s illegal to kill them).
Basically he made individual-sized pigeon pies (to an exquisite recipe) which he then placed inside a giant pie crust. This was wheeled out to the expectant diners – who certainly weren’t anticipating what happened next! The lid was removed – & twenty-four pigeons rose skywards & fluttered around the dining room.
After getting over this extraordinary spectacle (& the shock, in a couple of cases) each guest was presented with their own individual pie, which they all praised fulsomely. The meat was cooked in various ways; a confit of the legs added & slow-cooked with vegetables, red wine & other such comestibles; topped with a mouthwateringly tender, sliced pigeon breast & then carefully scattered with other gorgeous goodies before being topped with a crisp crust.
It was evidently the ‘dish of the day’ & I suspect that pigeon will no longer be the much-maligned dish it once was; but thankfully will prove popular again. Mind you, game has been enjoying something of a renaissance here in the UK – albeit not quite so exotic as those consumed by the Howling Duck Ranch crew at the Rod & Gun Club dinner, recently….!
If you’d like to actually watch Heston’s programme – & I simply cannot recommend it highly enough (it is fascinating, engaging, extraordinary, especially the unique, literally magical dessert he prepared) you can find a link which will get you to repeat viewing (for the next 30 days only, though) via this www address:
http://www.channel4.com/food/on-tv/heston-blumenthal/feast/about-heston-s-medieval-feast-09-03-10_p_1.html
…Enjoy! And especially if you love birds (as I certainly do, thebackforty) you’ll hopefully like the ‘Language of the Birds’ post I wrote on my LittleFfarm Dairy Blog back on 6th February 2009, when I was snowed in here for ten days.
Thanks for a fascinating Blog & a lovely post (I’m certainly considering pigeons myself, now!) – HDR suggested taking a read & I’m darn glad I have – another regular visitor, from now on.
Jo, thank you so much for your comments 🙂 I did stop and look up your Language of the Birds post (loved it!) and here is the link for anyone who wants to check it out as well…http://littleffarmdairy.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/the-language-of-the-birds/
I’ll be stopping back in to see what’s afoot and how kidding time progresses…what a wonderful place you and your husband have 🙂 Cheers!
Robbyn
Oh Robbyn, when I was a child, pigeon stew was on our menu every fall at hunting time. It was delicious – the whole bird simmered until the meat fell away from the bones, and the flavor was superb. Thanks for the great post!
As for the zoning regs, I pass along to you some advice I got from a local grass-fed based animal farm: Ask for forgiveness, not for permission. Just go ahead and do it, as discreetly as possible.
We frequently saw “wood pigeons” in Europe. I guess that’s what we would call squab. They looked a lot like any city pigeon, only significantly larger (like the size of an old, fully grown hen), and much healthier too. They had the dark grey coloring with the pale grey band around the neck, and faint iridescence at the tips of the feathers. I could see why people would eat those. There looked to be enough meat on them to make it worth the effort of plucking them. I have to wonder about the return on investment for doves and city-type pigeons.
we seem to have a nesting pair of pigeons setting up home in our big barn. i was just thinking yesterday how to catch them and serve them for dinner. 😀
how DOES one butcher a pigeon? do you just slit their throats? i’m not sure i’d be able to catch them w/o shooting them though. they nest up in the loft which is about 25 feet high.
As a child, one of our neighbors raised racing pigeons. They’d take off early every Saturday morning to a “race meet” somewhere, the pigeons in rectangular basket-type carriers. There the homing pigeons were turned loose, and there was some kind of an electronic reader inside their coop at home that would mark each bird’s arrival time home by way of a chip in their leg band. I’m not sure if they were competing against other flocks, or only within their own. Maybe you’ve heard of carrier pigeons bringing messages during war time too.
Nita, wow, sounds delicious… Jack’s mom cooked hers in a pressure cooker, bones and all (just found this out right now as he’s telling me…) I’ve never tasted pigeon …yet!
Kate, yes, there seem to be varieties that are quite large and raised specifically for their meat, such as the King pigeons. I’ve barely scratched the surface of this subject, as we’re still researching it, but it’s pretty neat having another type fowl with such possibilities 🙂
Tansy, Jack’s mom used to (sorry if this offends) break their necks using just her thumb, slit the throat as close to the head as possible, removed the head, dipped the carcass in boiling water holding them by the feet, removed the feet afterwards, plucked and then eviscerated them removing the inedible internal parts but retaining all the edible parts including the neck and skin all the way down. I’m not sure how you catch any in the wild…can you put food down and somehow lure them that way? If you figure out how, I’d love to know 🙂
Sadge, isn’t that fascinating? In my reading, I found some people who raise homing pigeons eat their culls, and that the now-extinct passenger pigeon became extinct for the very reason that they were quite tasty…and were eaten to extinction (hope I got my facts right on that…worth doublechecking, but I did read it from a few sources) I do know some pigeons earned awards for military animal service in the world wars for being reliable transport for messages back and forth across embattled areas and enemy lines.
Robbyn
I’m a little late to the party since these posts were made in March, but you’ve hit on a fascinating subject to me.
When I was five I went to live with Gramma and my “Unk”.
Lakota for grandfather is T’Unkishala. I had difficulty with the pronunciation as a smaller child.
I was five the year when I arrived for my first year of school with my grandparents and my uncle was a high school aged jock with a crush on a farmer’s daughter near our home.
It was a time when father’s had rules about young gentlemen callers, so my uncle hit on the idea of using me as an excuse to spend time with the object of his interest.
He and his friends showed up at the farm with me in tow and asked the farmer if they could catch some pigeons so I could raise a few while I attended first grade.
The farmer approved but sent his daughter along to the barn to oversee the capture of the pigeons.
The friends climbed the rafters in the hay loft and grabbed the pigeons while they slept and brooded their young and then slipped one wing over the other which pinned the wing long enough to drop the bird into my uncle’s waiting hands to be placed in a gunny sack.
Inbetween captures, he entertained the farmer’s daughter with tales of his exploits on the track and field.
I later sold the resulting squab to a conductor on one of the rail road passenger trains, who in turn sold them, at a profit, to the chef on the dining car.
It was considered a large income for a first grader. My “Unk” insisted that my uncle help me in the beginning with slaughter etc. but by spring the following year I was well versed in slaughtering and picking the birds.
The young were killed by inserting a small sharp blade into the very back of the mouth so that it severed the spinal column at the base of the brain and the birds were placed in a metal cone open at the bottom to bleed out.
I never scalded the squab as the skin was too tender and the new fletchings were easily removed by pulling.
I then removed the crop and the viscera and left the neck attached after removing the head and bathed the carcass in a tub of ice water to cool.
I slaughtered at 26 to 30 days of age before the area under the wings grew pin feathers.
I placed the cooled carcasses in a wooden tub and covered them in lard and put them in the springhouse until the conductor arrived for his weekly purchase. I was keeping 50 or so pair so I killed and cleaned about a dozen squab a week.
The woooden tub became the first returnable for deposit in my experience. The conductor would return the two tubs he got each week and my only cost was the lard I used to cover the squab.
The pigeons fed themselves other than a little scattered grain I’d have my uncle scrounge at the rail yard and bring home and the parent birds fed the squab.
At $1.50 a bird I was clearing nearly twenty bucks a week less the lard costs.
That was over a decade more than a half century ago so I don’t remember what lard cost but I suspect “Unk” forgot to charge me what he’d paid for it at the packing plant where he picked up large pails of it.
I’ve got a loft with Swiss Mondaine on my acreage here and still love to watch them go about their business daily. I can’t release them here in the high desert since hawks, owls and eagles outnumber my pigeons and relish a pigeon meal as much as I do.