There's got to be a morning after

Most of the chickens on our farm work for a living, but there are 4 that have been elevated to "pet" status. I caught this picture of three of them taking a dust bath in the flower garden in front of the front porch. They seem content to leave the flowers alone so I don't care too much that they leave deep holes in their dusting area. Oh, I might tell them they are "bad chickens" as I walk on by, but that's about the extent of my trying to get them to cease and desist. It's really quite pointless to try anyway. They seem very content in their "petdom" and were quite happy the morning after 50 of their farm mates met up with the ax.

The first of our two butchering parties for the year is in the books. Someone was surprised that we call this a party and asked me if it was really all that fun? I cannot say the work is "fun" per se, but it is a gathering of friends and that is what is fun about the event. This was the first one we ever had where it rained almost the entire morning. While it was quite miserable in the rain and everyone was truly a mess, we all agreed that the rain was much nicer than the 90 degree temperatures we have been having. I will include a few pictures of the event so I guess I should put some kind of warning about graphic content. I won't put up any that are too graphic, but this not the ballet. It is chicken butchering.

I did not end up getting my chicken crates built for this event so we did it our old old way which was to use an old wire dog kennel to load up groups of 6-8 chickens and bring them from the pasture to our butchering area. Normally I would move all the older chickens from the pasture into the barn the night before, but I am overlapping batch one and batch two this year so the pen in the barn is filled with 50 5-day-old chicks. Thanks so much to Eric for making the 8 trips out and back to the pasture to get the chickens while the rest of us butchered. It was his first time helping us and remember it rained almost all morning. What a trooper!

Bill and Mike did the killing, scalding and plucking as usual. I don't know why Mike looks so much wetter than Bill does in this picture. I built this plucker with Bill's help several years back. It will pluck two chickens clean in about 30 seconds. An amazing piece of equipment. Thanks so much for Chris's daughter Zoe who did a great job overseeing the temperature and timing of the scalding. She was another first timer who jumped right in and helped without complaint.

I get to spend most of time at the evisceration table. I guess I got "chosen" for this job years ago because I am a veterinarian. Perhaps someone felt my skills as a surgeon could be used to remove internal organs from chickens. I suppose they were correct. I definitely have no problem with this job. We had our usual crew of me, Charlie and Paul. Chris who joined us for the first time last year was back as well and she brought along a friend, Christina, who helped us for her first time. Thank you so much Christina. You did a great job. That plucker does a great job too don't you think? And thanks Mike for bringing the pop-up tarp home for us to work under. It kept most of the table crew mostly dry.

Christine and Sue did their usual awesome job in the kitchen doing the final work making sure the chickens look real "purdy", bag them and get them into the refrigerator.

And that is our butchering morning in a nutshell. We were done and cleaned up by around 11:30am. Usually there is a little socializing afterwards, but everyone was so soaking wet and dirty that getting home and dry became a happy thought. So everyone took the number of chickens they wanted and headed home.

Today, my job was to take the 21 chickens that were left in my fridge and do something with them. 6 went to the local smokehouse to get marinated and smoked (mouth watering as I type). Not all of these are mine. The rest I either cut up or packaged whole and started the re-stocking of the freezer. It will be awhile before our freezer stock starts looking normal again.

As I was finishing my job under the glow of the mercury vapor light outside the barn, I could hear Mike still working the tractor out in the field. The near full moon was rising above the field across the road. A picture perfect end to a blessed day on the farm.