The lovely Abby at Sugar Creek Family Farm invited us out to help with chicken preparing. Good times that. I'd helped with this chore as a kid at Deedle's farm, but Dearest had never even seen it done. We are all about hands on learning.
So, chickens are calm when you hang them upside down by their feet.
Feathers come right off after a scalding dip. That's the part that smells. Really smells yucky.
Dinosaur looking feet snap right off. You know, I never really thought about that part before.
Wee tots hiding under native lean-to. Cute toes. They mostly avoided the carnage of the day. Despite Lil'Bugs exclamations of, "We'll eat them!"- I think some of the visuals upset her. She's learning too.Me? I held the baby. Thank you Blueberry! Hey, I'm good with fruit. Fruit is not bloody, does not smell like wet feathers, nor does fruit come pecking at the carnage bits of its tree brothers. Shudder. Apple anyone?
Then, I was blessed with the chore of laundry. I washed the chicken blood spattered clothes three times, frustrated and grossed out that a spot on Dearest's work jeans just wouldn't come clean. Until I realized it was a paint spot. Red paint from our parlor ceiling. Gah. The same red staining paint that has plagued me in recent times into thinking I had a rash. I am never using red house paint ever again.
lol - damned red paint. :)
ReplyDeleteOut, damn'd spot! out, I say!—One; two: why, then
ReplyDelete'tis time to do't.—Hell is murky.—Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and
afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our
pow'r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the chicken? to
have had so much blood in him?
- Chad
Yep, that's kinda gross. But then, I grew up in a farm town. They killed pigs in my presence. *sigh* I love meat. ;)
ReplyDeleteI love being present when someone is exposed to the gory part of meat-eating, having never been exposed previously. Most people are happily chomping away at burgers and hot wings every night, and would rather not think about the animals they came from. When seeing the process, some are fascinated, some horrified (the most fun, IMO). I think it's a good thing to know as much as possible about the foods you put into your body, from beginning to end.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, I witnessed this process a lot. Except often the removal of heads was done with a rake instead of an axe, and chickens were left to run around until they stopped moving. I really wish my uncles thought to hang them like your friends.
My great-grandmother would grab them by the neck and twirl them overhead until their heads popped off. The bodies would run around for a while and then fall down. Thankfully I never witnessed it first-hand. I do love me some chicken. :)
ReplyDeleteI watched my father in law kill rabbits, they die very easily and he was able to do it pretty humanely. i could handle that I think but it's all the cleaning and processing that I find icky. At the same time I want to be able to do this because I've been hoping to find a humane source of meat for years, and the most humane i can know of is to love the animals and to slaughter them with gratitude and heart. Thanks for this, if we do rabbits again I'll post something similar.
ReplyDelete