Flower Power

I'm definitely NOT a flower guy.  I don't really like flowers, especially not white ones. I like things with color, but right now there are a ton of white flowers blooming. Walking around in the backyard it's hard not to notice the Bradford Pear tree in full bloom.  This tree is an ornamental, I think, since I've never seen it produce an edible pear.  It is a nice tree to look at now when it is blooming or in the fall when it's leaves turn colors.  I got this tree delivered to me when it was the size of a pencil.  I joined the Arbor Day Foundation and they sent me some free trees and this was one of them.  I planted it thinking I wound dig it up and replant later, but it grew so quickly, and put down roots so deep, that I couldn't dig it up!

Bradford Pear in bloom

Right next to that tree is another tree about to burst forth with blooms - a navel orange tree.  Sorry that the photo is blurry, but you can see that there are a bunch of blooms that will soon open, filling the air with orange blossom fragrance.  I can't think of a better smell on earth than orange blossoms.

Blurry shot of orange blossoms

Walking around to the front of the yard, I crossed the road and looked around in the road ditch.  Yes!  Just what I was looking for - Dewberries in bloom.  Dewberries are like blackberries and they grow wild in our ditches.  We pick the dewberries and make the best jelly that a homemade biscuit has ever seen.

Dewberry blooms

From the looks of the vines shooting all over the place, 2014 is going to provide a bumper crop of dewberries.  Other fruits and berries we have to plant, but these just come up wild every year in our ditches. What a blessing!

Dewberries running all over the ditches

Finally, one last white flower.  These are the flowers on our edible pear tree.  We use the pears from this tree to make delicious pies.  Last year was not a good year for pears, but this year looks to be a better year if you judge by the flowers loaded up on the branches.

Pear blossoms

Although admittedly not a flower guy, I do like the fruit and berries that follow these flowers!

Work is a Beautiful Thing

Call me crazy, but I like to work.  I especially like to work hard outside.  Maybe it's because I work a white collar office job Monday - Friday.  Maybe because I love the outdoors.  Maybe because when you put in a good day's work, you feel good about what you've done and you definitely sleep better at night.

To underscore the topic of WORK, I stumbled across an incredible ad the other day.  t is narrated by Mike Rowe.  You know Mike.  He's the host of the show Dirty Jobs. We watch him in that show travel across America spending time with people who do Dirty Jobs.  One program will find him in a septic tank scrubbing down walls or hand fishing for catfish in a muddy riverbank or at a worm farm handling millions of the slimy creatures.

Mike has teamed up with an advertiser to bring us the following ad.  Click the arrow to view the 1 minute video and then come back and let's talk.

I LOVED that ad.  First, it was just doggone optimistic.  Americans need something to be positive about right now.  The spot starts off with ominous music amidst a dull, colorless backdrop and sad narration.  You see hulking equipment and brown fields and warehouses all empty, quiet, and vacant.  It makes you sad, really, especially when he says, "I was mighty!"  What happened?

Then at about the 0.27 second mark, he says I'm still here.  The switch is thrown and he says, "I will rise again!"  Man, this is like a pep talk at half time when your team is down by a few touchdowns.  You hear something like this and you're ready to run through walls!

The ad is by Wal Mart, as you know by now, and that really surprised me.  I'm going to be honest now and tell you that I don't like going into Wal Mart.  I don't like them because they replaced the mom & pop stores across America with big warehouse stores with no character.  I don't like them because of all the people in the stores.  I don't like them because they have 35 checkout lanes and only 3 or 4 will be open at any given time.  I don't like them because part of the formula for their success is cheap goods manufactured in foreign lands.

However, I want to give credit where credit is due.  They are pledging $250 Billion dollars (that's billion - with a B) to source goods manufactured in the good old US of A and they think that will create 1 million new manufacturing jobs across our fruited plain.  If they can do that, my hat's off to them.  Americans need to get back to work. If you're not working for whatever reason, you become dependent.

I don't know about you, but I don't like to be dependent on anyone.  Dependency, to me, creates a debt that must be repaid, because we're all here together and should all be pulling the wagon, if physically able.  I don't want to owe anyone anything.  I'd rather be a giver instead of a taker.  Romans 13:8 tells us to "owe no man but to love him."  I think that being dependent upon the government or your neighbor or the taxpayer or your parents for any considerable period of time is a burden - an inner battle that eats away at you because work is what we were intended to do by our Creator.

I agree with Mike Rowe that work is a beautiful thing.  In fact, so does God:

Genesis 2:15

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.

From an agricultural perspective, yesterday was the first day of Spring.  It is time to get in the garden and get your hands dirty and work.  Putting in work planting a crop and later harvesting it, cooking it, and serving healthy meals to your family that you grew by toil and sweat is a labor of love - and that WORK is a beautiful thing! 

The Dented Can

My Grandfather on my Mom's side (Poppy) owned and operated a small town family grocery store.  It was the type of store where "the regulars" came in for a free cup of Community Coffee Dark Roast in the morning.  It was a store where you could bring your homegrown cucumbers and Poppy would give you a fair price and sell them in the Produce Department.  They'd always sell out before the cukes that came from the warehouse!  It was also the type of store where bag boys carried out your sacks of groceries, put them in your car, thanked you and wished you a good day.

One thing I learned from having a grocery store in the family is that the customer always received only the best.  We weren't going to sell any dented cans.  Many times throughout the delivery process, unloading and stocking onto the shelves, canned goods got beat up and became dented and that was just unacceptable. You can't properly front and face a dented can.  It just couldn't be sold to the customer, so they always ended up in our house in the pantry.  As long as the seal wasn't broken, there was nothing wrong with the contents and we ate lots of beans and corn and soup that came from dented cans.  In fact, I was probably well into my teens when I became aware that there were actually canned goods WITHOUT dents in them.

Sometimes I think that many of us are like dented cans.  Our outsides are sort of dinged up and unattractive, but what's inside is good if we've been made new by the Blood of Christ:

1 Samuel 16:7

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

The Dented Can - Image Credit

Although we no longer have a family grocery store, the 'dented can' principle is still alive and kicking in our household - with eggs.  Benjamin's job is to gather eggs.  He uses the wire basket shown below to go to the chicken tractor, the egg boxes in the hen house, and the egg boxes in the barn to gather eggs each day.  Oh, he also checks the hiding places that a few hens like to lay their eggs in, like under the barn sink, or up in the hayloft, or behind the fan, or in the small barn in the corner, etc. etc.  Each day he'll come back to the house with a basket full.  The basket below averages 50 - 60 eggs.

Benjamin's basket of eggs

Now although an egg can't be dented (as far as I know), there are some eggs which are just not eggs that you sell to customers, friends and neighbors.  So Benjamin sorts them out. He'll pack customers' eggs in cartons, always trying to put at least one Aracauna egg in the carton as the blue or green egg offset against the brown eggs make for a really nice presentation.  Notice the customers' cartons loaded up with nice eggs, but also notice the carton in the back.

Eggs for the customers - Family eggs in the back

The carton in the back is the egg equivalent to the 'dented can' and is for the Sonnier Family consumption. Benjamin will sort out broken eggs like the one below.  Some get broken in the course of transit between the barn and the house.  If the membrane isn't broken, well, those get put in the family carton and we eat them. If it is broken, the dog gets to eat them. 

The broken 'dented can'

Other eggs are like the one below and are called "Fart Eggs."  I explained those in this post from last year and you can click on it to read the interesting story of the fart egg:  http://ourmakersacresfamilyfarm.blogspot.com/2013/06/extra-small-egg.html  Well, fart eggs are perfectly fine to eat, but they are small.  Those get put in the family carton along with the broken ones.

The Fart Egg 'dented can'

Then there are the eggs that are just dirty.  Some eggs get dirty from muddy chicken feet climbing into and out of the nest.  Some eggs get dirty from, well, chicken poop. We'll wash some of it off, but we don't like to wash the eggs if at all possible.  When a hen lays an egg, she puts a coating on the egg called the 'bloom.' The bloom seals the porous egg and keeps bacteria out of it.  Washing the egg removes this protective coating and also allows the moisture in the egg to evaporate, thus reducing shelf life of the egg.  Excessively dirty eggs get washed but will go in the family carton with the broken eggs and fart eggs.

The dirty 'dented can'

There is one more egg that we don't sell to customers and I don't have a picture of it. I call them mystery eggs.  Remember when I told you about hens liking to hide their eggs?  Well, mystery eggs are those nests that we find in uncommon places and we don't know for sure if they are good or not.  Those definitely go in the family carton. These eggs are tested by floating them in water.  If they are rotten, they will float and those eggs get composted.  The eggs that pass the float test are cracked ONE AT A TIME (a lesson learned!) into a separate little bowl before we cook them. 

Looking at the family carton is sort of like the Island of Misfit Toys, but you know what?  Pastured eggs laid by free range hens roaming under blue skies and sunshine - eating bugs, worms, and who knows what else are delicious, regardless if they have a few 'dents' in them. 

2014 Cornish Cross Meat Birds - By the Numbers

Things change quickly don't they?  In just 10 short weeks, our Cornish Cross Chickens went from this:

1 day old - a few ounces

To this:

10 weeks old - 6 pounds

To this:

Change indeed

In what I promise to be the last post on Cornish Cross Meat Birds for a long time, this is the post where we look at the numbers and examine the hard facts about the birds. I think it is helpful to do this as it serves as a basis of comparison from year to year - sort of like a measuring stick.  It may not provide all the answers you need, but at least starts you asking the right questions.

Date of Receipt:           01/03/2014

Date of Slaughter:       03/15/2014

Days old at Slaughter:               73

Weeks old at Slaughter:       10.43
Number of Birds Slaughtered:  92

Expenses:

• Purchased birds:                  $40.00  (101 birds at $0.40 per bird)
• Propane                                $10.00
• Waterer/Feeders                   $14.50
• Bulbs for Heat Lamp            $19.55
• Fixed costs                            $37.50
• Ice                                         $  8.75
• Ziploc Bags                            $  6.13
• Feed  (40 bags @ $17.48)   $699.20 {50 lb bags}

Total Cost:                                    $835.63

Losses: 9 birds or 8.91% mortality rate - unfortunately, most of the losses occurred at the latter part of the ten week growing period, AFTER they had consumed a lot of feed.  If they are going to die, you want them to die early on.

The math:

Cost per bird:                   $9.08

Cost per pound:                $2.22

Feed consumed per bird:   21.74 pounds

Feed cost per bird:            $7.60

Feed cost per pound:         $0.35

At $9.08 per bird, those are some expensive birds.  Notice the expenses DON'T include labor and it is a lot of work for 10 weeks to care for, then butcher, then cut them up. If you were to sell them, you would need to find clintele that placed a premium on a natural, quality bird versus the 'factory birds' you get at the grocery store.

Total pounds Cornish Cross carcasses whole:  376.07 pounds

Average pounds per bird:  92 birds:                      4.09 pounds

This is very interesting information.  Our records from 3 prior batches show that the size or average pounds per bird was not materially different from prior harvests.  All other expenses compared to prior years were not materially different.  I have to tip my hat to Parsley's Feed Store in Jennings as the feed cost per bag of Chick Grower remains the same price since 2012!

But the Huge difference was the Feed Consumed per bird:  This year each bird consumed on average 21.75 pounds of feed.  Last year each bird consumed on average only 12 pounds of feed!!!  We experienced almost a doubling in the amount of feed the birds ate while harvesting a bird yielding the same carcass weight. Our feed cost per bird went from $4.20 per bird last year to $7.60 per bird this year - with NO CHANGE in the cost of feed!  How can this be?

I certainly don't have an answer.  I can tell you that the winter of 2014 was colder and wetter for longer than the 2013 crop year, which may have encouraged them to eat more this year to stay warm?  Or perhaps the colder weather hindered grass growth which supplements their diets, causing them to eat more feed?  Fact is, those are guesses and I just don't know.  It remains a mystery.

Sometimes life throws you curve balls and you just have to choke up, stay in the batter's box and keep swinging for the fences.  And that's what we'll do.

In the end, we have a better, more high quality bird than what you can buy in the store and we'll have some nice chickens to eat on all year long that were harvested right off of the pasture of Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  Sure, you can purchase a cheaper bird, but you can't purchase a better bird.  These chickens will provide some mighty fine eating - and there's no mystery there!

Cutting up Chicken (The 9 Piece Cut-Up)

Yesterday's Post found by clicking HERE gave you a run-down of how we butchered all of our Cornish Cross meat chickens.  We have a process that we try to improve each time.  It is work, but fun, too.  The work is not done, though, when you butcher the birds. We let them age over-night on ice, going through the rigor mortis process. This will allow the chickens to be more tender. Now it is the next afternoon and I'll show you what comes next.

We have to cut them all up to put them in the freezer.  After church we'll eat lunch, have coffee and some nice chocolates and then get busy.  The first item on the agenda is to re-sharpen the knives.  They got a workout yesterday, but today is going to put them to the test.  You MUST have a sharp knife!  I sharpen them using a whetstone and honing oil and sharpening steel.  Now we're ready to go as we have 92 birds to cut up before Evening Services.  Tricia pulls them out of the tub and weighs each one individually and logs the weight. We'll show you what we use that for in tomorrow's post.

Tricia then gets a gallon Zip Loc Freezer bag and marks the weight and date on the outside with a Sharpie and then hands the bird to me.  What a nice looking bird we have here!  They are absolutely beautiful - better than the birds you see at the grocery store!  I position the bird breast up on the cutting board.  We like to cut all of our birds up rather than leaving any whole.  They store better in the freezer cut up, bagged and stacked flat, as we eat on them all year long.

A nice Cornish Cross Meat Bird

Before I start cutting, let me say that there is no 'right way' to cut up a chicken.  Do it however you want to. We've done it several different ways, but mainly use one of two methods and I'll show you one today.  Take your knife and make a slit through the skin between the drumstick and the body.  First on one side...

Slicing through the skin on one side

And then the next.  Don't cut into the meat - just the skin.

Slicing through the skin on the other side

Now take the legs and thighs and break it over at the backbone.  

Hyper-extending the carcass to break the backbone

Once it breaks, make a cut to give two separate pieces - a leg and thigh portion and a breast and wing portion.  Before going forward, let me say that we do cut some using another technique in which you pop the thigh joint out of place and cut along the backbone.  We'll do a few this way, but you must cut very carefully to make sure you include the little 'oyster' piece of meat in with your thigh portion.  If you're not extremely careful, with that method, you leave a lot of meat on the backbone. Perhaps we'll show that method another day.  Anyway, back to the task, now you have two pieces of chicken.

Cutting through the broken vertebrae to yield two pieces

Take the leg/thigh piece and cut right through the backbone.  You'll notice that my sharpening steel is ever-present in many of these pictures.  You'll need it to continue sharpening after cutting through bones.

Slicing right through the backbone

Now you have two beautiful leg quarters.  This would go nicely on the barbecue pit right now, but we're going to break it down a little further.

Two Leg Quarters

We'll now separate the drumstick from the thigh.  Flip the leg quarter over where you are looking at the "non-skin" side.  The Good Lord has essentially put a little line of fat where the thigh meets the drumstick to let you know exactly where you need to cut. Right below my knife, you can see the little line I'm talking about. Simply cut through the center of the line and on down and through the joint.  It is an easy cut when you cut on the 'perforated line.'

Cut along the dotted line (the thin line of fat)

See how nicely that worked?  Repeat for the other side.

Cutting the drumstick away from the thigh

Now we'll separate the wings from the carcass.  If you face the breast down and feel the wing, you can feel right where the 'shoulder joint' connects to the body.  You'll want to cut carefully around the joint so you don't cut into the breast meat.  The wings will come right off.

Removing the wings

Now we'll remove the neck and portion of the backbone/ribcage from the breast. Start at the back working toward the front of the bird.  There is another little line of fat that you can follow down and cut with your knife and then down all the way to the neck.

Cutting out the ribcage and neck portion

Use your fingers to remove the neck/ribs/backbone from the carcass once you've made the cut mentioned above.

Separating the neck and ribs

You'll be left with a big, nice, meaty breast.  We'll want to cut it in half.

A nice breast portion

Flip it over so that the 'meat-side' is facing down and cut through the cartilage right down the center of the breast.  It is not a difficult cut, but you might want to sharpen your knife again so you're not working so hard pushing a dull blade through it.

Beginning the cut through the cartilage

Continue cutting through it so that you have two distinct breast halves.

Finishing up the breast cut

And Voila!  Here we have our 9 piece cut up: 2 breasts, 2 wings, 2 drums, and 2 thighs.  Don't leave out maybe the most important piece - the neck/backbone/rib portion.  Whenever you thaw this out, put it in a stock pot on the stove top with some water, carrots, onions, celery, salt and pepper and a bay leaf and make a nice broth.  It is so healthy for you.  Instead of using water to cook rice, use the broth instead.  I can't begin to explain how much richer and flavorful this broth makes anything taste.

Similar to an artist's palette, the cutting board and table below contain the raw ingredients to many creative things that you can create in your kitchen - healthy, delicious, and something you can be proud to serve your family and friends.  For now, though, we're tired and intend on freezing all of the chicken.

A Nice Nine Piece Cut up

We get to work packaging each bird in a Zip Loc Freezer Bag and stack them in our freezer.  As we need chicken throughout the year, we'll pull out and thaw.  They are delicious and we know exactly how they were raised and butchered.  We know the conditions in which they lived and died.  We know exactly what's in them and feel confident in feeding them to our family.  What a blessing it is to be able to grow your own food!

Tomorrow we'll go through the numbers and show you financially how raising birds worked out.  We do this every year and compare the results.  It's always interesting. See ya tomorrow!

Butchering the 2014 Meat Birds

Boucherie de Poulet (Chicken Butchering):
Disclaimer: Before we get going, I want to forewarn those that get queasy at the sight of blood that today might not be a good day to read the blog. I also want to warn you that today's post lacks brevity as I'm using this forum to capture a few notes to look at for improvement next year's chicken crop.

First off we'd like to thank the family and friends that took part in this years' boucherie.  We had a lot of help and this would've been most difficult without the conscripted labor.  I kind of felt like Tom Sawyer with painting Aunt Polly's fence in assembling the team of family and friends involved.  Remember when he tricked the neighborhood boys into thinking that fence painting is fun?  But chicken killing (at least the way we do it) is actually fun, although it is a lot of work!

My sole regret is that I didn't take more pictures of all the action.  However, butchering chickens is a "Dirty Job" and my hands get so dirty, I didn't want to get the blood and guts on my camera.  I did get a few shots and below we'll show you the process, each of the "stations" involved, and then in posts in days to follow, we'll show you how we do an 8 piece cut-up for freezing and then we'll share the actual financials to show cost per bird, average weight per bird, avg pounds of feed each bird ate, etc.  Here we go:

Here are pictures of the International Brotherhood of Chicken Slayers Union, minus two friends, Dale and Warren, who played key roles in the process, but I was negligent in capturing them in the picture.  We all look a little tired as this picture was taken once the job was done.  Once finished, we gorged ourselves on a big pot of red beans & rice & sausage that Tricia prepared for the work crew.  Both pictures are the same with the exception of the second one that has me in the place of my lovely wife.

Do they look like they're in FOWL moods?

A fun Family Reunion

As This post showed, Dale and I got all the chickens in place the night before and Russ, Benjamin and I set up all the stations so that we could get a good start in the morning.  We got out the whet stone and honing oil and sharpened the Chicago Cutlery knives until they were razor sharp and used a steel to keep them sharp during the entire process.  At around 8 am once the other chores were done, we lit the fire on the scalder and fine tuned the set-up and got ready to butcher 92 Cornish Cross Meat Birds.

Station 1: The Killing Cones:
Russ, Conner, and Benjamin were in charge of this important stage.  They would get each bird from the holding pen and bring to the cones.  Now you can order stainless steel cones for around $30 each, but on my daily commutes to Lake Charles, I find these on the side of the road that are priced much better!  The rubber holds the birds snug as to minimize any bruising.

The boys insert the chickens head-first into the cone, pull the head through, and with a sharp knife, cut the chicken's artery (jugular vein) that runs right below his jawbone.  We can kill four at a time.  We could do more, but that would cause a bottle-neck at the next station.  Here is Benjamin administering the cut.

The cut

Now most people when they think of butchering will think of a hatchet and a stump and a chicken 'running around with his head cut off.'  We don't do this.  Bleeding the bird out properly is necessary to get all the blood out of the meat.  If you don't do this, you'll have blood coagulated throughout the meat, especially at the joint areas and it affects the shelf life and taste of the meat.

This is a humane process in that the blood rushes out of the bird quickly, causing him to lose consciousness quickly and die.  It doesn't take long for the bird to completely bleed out.

Blood flowing from the jugular

Leviticus 19:26

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

You shall not eat anything with the blood, nor practice divination or soothsaying.

We have a bucket positioned under each cone to catch all the blood.  We don't waste a single thing, except maybe the cluck.  It will all go back into the garden to improve the soil in order to grow healthy vegetables this Spring/Summer.

That ain't red paint

Once the chicken has been bled out and has died, it is laid out on a bench to be picked up by the operator of the next station.

Station 2: Scalding:

This important station was manned by Dale and involves a crawfish boiling pot full of water heated by a propane burner.  I add a squirt or two of dishwashing liquid to the water.  It is an important job as the temperature must be monitored closely to keep it between 145 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit.  You can see the thermometer on the side of the pot.

The regulator on the fire must be adjusted intermittently to keep the water within the desired range of scalding.  Too cool and the feathers will not come off of your bird. Too hot and you'll cook your bird, resulting in meat that gets torn up at the next station.  The proper technique is to dunk the bird down past the joint of the 'drumstick.'  There are little feathers that grow there that you want to be sure to have that area scalded so they'll be removed.  

Scalding the chicken

Once dunked down, give the bird a little shake and then pull him up all the way out of the water and dunk him again... and again... and again...  You want to continue this process for a minute or so.  Then grab one tail feather or one large wing feather. When you can pull it out easily with little resistance, your bird is adequately scalded and ready for the next station.  You can see some of the "test feathers" at the lower right hand side of the photo below.

Pulling the bird out and about to test.

Now it is time for...

Station 3: Plucking:

This is a homemade chicken plucker made by using the plans from Herrick Kimball's "Whiz Bang" Chicken Plucker and my, isn't it a dandy?  This thing works beautifully. It was operated by my dad who sprayed water on the spinning birds, and my nephew Graham, who was the switch man.  He turned the device on and off.

All you do is drop a scalded bird in a spinning machine and spray it with water.  In 20 seconds or so, you turn off the Whiz Bang Chicken plucker and pull out a perfectly de-feathered bird!  What a time saver!  Just look at those feathers coming off with ease as it spins around and comes into contact with the rubber fingers.

The Spin Cycle

Station 4: De-heading/De-footing & Quality Control:

After the feathers are removed by the Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker, the chickens are moved to the De-heading and De-footing station along with Quality Control.  I'm heading up (ha ha) the de-heading department.  I lay the chickens on the bench, grab a chicken head between my index and middle fingers while holding the breast with my other hand and give a quick yank and off comes his head.  You could alternatively use a knife, but this leaves a sharp edge of the bone that will rip your zip loc freezer bag. Then using a sharp knife, I cut off the feet by hyper-extending the foot just a little and cutting right in the joint.  I flip around to the other side and off comes the feet, nice and clean.  We save the heads and the feet in a bucket.

Then my side-kick Carson takes care of Quality Control.  He goes over the entire bird meticulously, pulling off any little feathers that we may have missed.  He's got an eagle-eye.  Once they've passed his inspection and has his stamp of approval, the birds are certified and able to go to the next station.

Nice looking birds that have passed Carson's inspection and are ready for gutting

Before the birds move on, I'll take a knife and make a slit right where the neck meets the breast and I'll reach in and separate the windpipe and loosen the crop.  Then I'll make another slit right above the vent (rear end) and pull the bird open exposing the guts.  This readies the bird for evisceration.  Since we removed the birds from feed and grass 18 hours ago, the intestinal tract and crop is pretty much empty. This makes the next procedure a little cleaner.  Tricia has the hands of a skilled surgeon and is in charge of the next station:

Station 5: The Evisceration Station:

Tricia will take the bird, running her hand inside the cavity along the inner breast-bone, grab the heart and a handful of guts, and pull.  Everything will come out, leaving just the intestines attached to the rear end.  The heart comes off and goes in one pot.  The gizzard comes off and goes in another.  The liver is a little tricky. As the picture shows below, she's carefully cutting out the gall bladder off of the liver.  You want to be careful not to bust this as it is full of green bile.  Once this is cut off, the liver goes in another pot.  My Mom helped Tricia by cleaning the organs and putting them away and rinsing the birds and cutting table.  We'll later clean the gizzards and separately package all the giblets for freezing.

Then the knife is used to carefully cut around the rear end, removing the intestines along with it.  All the guts go into a barrel. Reaching deep inside the bird, Tricia uses her fingers to pull the pink lungs out from either side of the backbone.  A water hose is used to spray the carcass inside and out clean.  The bird is flipped over and the preening gland is removed from the little butt.  The birds are then tossed into a vat of cool water where they'll cool for a few hours until butchering is complete.

Gutting the bird

Once the butchering is complete, I'll dig a hole between the rows in the garden and dump the feet and heads into the hole and bury them.

Chicken heads and feet will grow nice veggies next year

Another hole is dug between the rows of the garden and the bucket of guts from 92 birds from the eviscerating station are dumped into the hole and buried.

The guts of 92 birds

One more trench between the rows is dug and all the feathers we gathered from underneath the chicken plucker are buried.   Blood, guts, and feathers will enrich the soil.  The chickens pooped on the grass out on the pasture and will make the grass grow.  The remains of the chickens will make the garden grow.  

Feathers of 92 birds

Once the birds have cooled, we pour off the water and ice down the birds and let them go through the rigor mortis process overnight, aging until tomorrow afternoon when we'll cut them up.  We cover them up so that predators don't come eat all of our birds.

Birds chilling and aging overnight

For some debriefing notes, the birds were the best looking birds since we started raising them.  I attribute that to good temperature control on the scalder and attention on the plucker.  We had a lot of help and things went really smoothly due to our skilled butchering crew that worked together as a great team.  A couple of changes I can think of is to move the location of the whiz bang chicken plucker to be closer to the ditch, so that water doesn't pool, causing the Eviscerating Station to turn into a big mud hole.  We also need to get better hose nozzles that don't leak.  Finally we could position all the stations a little better to improve the flow.  We continue to get better each and every time.

Join us tomorrow as we show you how we cut the chickens up into a standard 8 piece cut up.  We'll sharpen our knives once again to be prepared for cutting.  

One of those days...

I worked hard getting the post ready, ran the spellcheck and then hit Preview like I always do to check for formatting issues and just to double check before publishing. Well, there seemed to be some sort of issue that never would allow me to save everything I posted.  When I backed out,  everything was gone except for the title. Arggghhh.

I'm going to bed.  We'll try this again tomorrow.  Good night.