The Great Sheep Mistake

As the fall draws to a close, we're sending the last few animals to slaughter before we have to feed them hay, which is expensive. We spent a morning loading the first six lambs. We backed the trailer up next to their fence, then created a second pen encompassing the trailer. We lured the flock with grain so that they would walk into the back of the trailer and we could send the ewes out the side door while keeping the lambs we wanted inside.

Everything was great and fine and Olivier pulled the trailer out of the field into the barnyard, readying for the drive to the slaughter house. We were set to start cleaning the hay barn (a dusty task, let me tell you) while he took them away.

Luckily, Andrew looked in the trailer and noticed that instead of six lambs, we had five lambs and a ewe. Whoops! We all trooped back into the field to release the ewe from an untimely death and Justin and Olivier captured a new, white lamb. We're really, really glad that Andrew stopped by right then!

Lambs ready to go:

Hauling the new lamb to the trailer:

The ewe escaping her fate:

The good old days

It has sadly come time to say goodbye to our original groups. We've been split into two groups of six for the last two months, but upon returning from our thanksgiving break this morning were informed that the jig was up. I've officially switched from group b to group a and we've been shuffled around to work with new people. Things just won't be the same...

Next up, the transition from bird to dinner, a close up look at turkeys and did we really send the wrong sheep to slaughter? Or did we catch it in time? Stay tuned!

Chainsaws!

Let's just start by saying that chainsaws are TERRIFYING. I'm amazed that the people I know who use chainsaws are still alive. I would never, ever, endorse chainsaw use without being trained and wearing protective equipment. I would even go so far as to say that I would not be in the presence of someone using a chainsaw without training or equipment.

The guy who trained us (and made us a mushroom) did a good job impressing that you can be completely safe, in control of the situation and experienced and make one mistake (or not even- accidents can just happen for no reason with huge things like trees and limbs under tension) and you're toast.

We spent three hours hearing about both professional lumberjacks and amateurs who had gotten a kickback by touching just the tiniest tip of their saw to something and had 50 stitches across their face, or spring poles (small trees caught under a larger tree) that threw them 100 feet. Bill (or Chainsaw Bill as we like to call him) recounted a few horror stories of his own and they seemed to all happen right when he thought everything was fine. Not in rain, or snow, or in a seemingly dangerous situation, but when he overlooked something that seemed simply normal.

So, with all this in mind, and sure I was going to drop dead at any moment impaled upon a tree limb, we headed into the woods.

We ended up learning how to fell trees (I did two!), take the limbs off and chop the trunks into firewood (or what would be split into firewood). We learned a technique to fell a tree exactly where we wanted to put it and practiced hitting a flag with the crown of branches. Very cool.

So yeah, chainsaws = scary if not used correctly. The damage it can do is not worth being unsure or untrained.

This little piggy...

These little piggies went to slaughter. This little piggy came home as bacon and ham.

Actually, not quite yet but we're waiting for our delivery from the slaughter house. Most of the meat will go to our meat CSA while one whole pig will be for us.

It was a bit strange to load up the animals we had been feeding and taking care of. They went off into their green trailer to return to us in vacuum sealed boxes. I miss them a bit, especially how excited they were to be fed. Luckily, come this spring, we'll have piglets!

Chicken Slaughter part 2

So there are a few ways to slaughter a chicken. You can cut off their heads which allows you to know for sure they're dead but requires quite a bit of force and coordinated effort. Or, you can slit the two veins on their throats, but theres a slight delay between doing the first and the second and there's no way to tell how much pain Mr. Clucks might be in during that.

We were told that when we go to do it, we had to be very sure and very ready because the worst thing you can do (and I do believe this is worse than killing them) is to maim or wound them. You can't hesitate at all once you start. For our first few birds we each did, we had an instructor next to us with their own knife which was reassuring.

I finally stepped up to the plate and chose the throat slitting method (later I moved to the decapitation after I had practiced on a dead chicken and knew I could do it well). I think the worst part of the whole process was lifting the chicken into the cone. It was flapping and trying to get away as I held it by the feet. Once inside, it calmed down, except for judging me with its beady little chicken eye.

I took a few deep breaths and then picked up the knife and slit. The moment was a lot calmer than I had anticipated, followed by the chicken body flapping and kicking.

We didn't know if a sad or happy picture was appropriate so you can just look at whichever one you choose.

I cut off its head once it was done bleeding out.

The next step was scalding them. The trick was to leave them in the hot water long enough their feathers loosened but not too long they started to cook.

Next, we strung them up and plucked their feathers into trashcans. The chickens we raised were meat birds (the gross kind that can't walk since they grow so fast- next time we've asked for more normal birds) so they were bred to have easy to remove feathers. We slaughtered a rooster as well and he was much harder to pluck.

After plucking, we cut their feet off and and their necks. We scooped their organs out of their body cavities, keeping the hearts and livers. That was the only part I didn't do since I don't do so well with body innards.

As we moved through the morning, we accumulated a number of heads, guts and feet which we then took to the woods and dumped.

And, finally, we were done. Two days later, we had chicken pad thai. Delicious.

Chicken Slaughter part 1

Chicken slaughter was quite the day. We went down to the tool shed where killing cones, buckets, a pot with hot water for scalding and a long table for evisceration were all set up. It was a bit strange to see our barnyard transformed during breakfast. I had also just given the broilers (called that to distinguish chickens between layers for eggs and those that we raise for meat) breakfast and water before heading down to slaughter them.

We started by talking about a bit about what it meant to kill an animal for food. We were all pretty nervous (and pretty nauseous, at least in my case) and it was nice to take a moment before we started. Betsy, our resident rabbi, spoke a little about the cycle and rhythm of life and death and after that we were all a bit calmer and felt better.

We sharpened our knives while the water continued to heat (it had to be 160 F to properly scald the chickens so the feathers were easy to pull off). Reid, who was showing us knife sharpening, had just shot a pheasant that morning so he pulled it out of his truck and showed us, pheasant style, what we were about to do.

Below is pheasant sans innards:

Once we were properly trained and grossed out, we went to get the first few broilers. We put them in this nifty chicken box and they happily sat there clucking while we took out our first victim...

A Milk and Cookies Kind of Day

Today was alternatively grotesque, violent and morbid.

We started by slaughtering chickens this morning, picking through moldy squash this afternoon and splitting wood this evening.

So a big warning: my next post, once I get all my pictures together, will be of the chicken process. Not for the faint of heart.

The good news is that so far I'm a natural at finding rocks for stone walls and splitting wood: it must be genetic.