Last spring I ordered meat chickens, thinking that filling my freezer with delicious, home-grown chicken would be a fulfilling and useful endeavor.
I was wrong.
We’d planned for a while to get a fridge for the basement for the extra eggs (they can be stored forever) and then the freezer could host the meat chickens when the time came. Expect the time came long before we actually purchased the fridge, so the huge birds have been eating us out of house and home, literally going through a bag of feed in three days.
But the fridge finally is in place and now all I had to do was butcher 22 roosters. Brian came home early to help, since wrangling 3 kids and a large knife is not a safe practice. I am very, very grateful for his help, since he ended up killing more than half of the birds while I plucked. And plucked. And plucked. And plucked. Until almost midnight.
I did everything you’re supposed to do. I dipped the birds in hot (not boiling) water to loosen the feathers. I started with the wing tips since they are the hardest. I tried not to cry when it got dark and I still had a pile of birds at my feet.
To add to the disaster I will add that I also lost the photos of the event I took for the blog. That would be more upsetting in and of itself expect that I lost the photos because I’ve lost my fancy DSLR camera. And even that is put in perspective because I took off my wedding ring to butcher the horrible creatures and it, too, is missing.
I should also clarify that we only butchered 12 of the birds.
Which, I suppose, gives me a second chance at taking photos.
If I find my camera.
Daddy's Tractor 