In Which I Process Chickens

Hello, all! Yes, yes, I know. You thought I dropped off the face of the earth. What actually happened was that precisely one month ago, our wireless router completely fried. The promised replacement was supposed to arrive by October 3, but clearly that has not happened.

Anyways, that is my excuse. But I do feel terrible for leaving everyone in the dark for so long, so I thought for this first blog post in over a month, I should do something big. Something flashy. Something involving viscera.

Welcome to Chicken Processing Day, the 2011 Edition.* Make sure you have your gingham apron, because you are about to get dirty.

First, Brian ties the birds up by their feet, then kills them as humanely as possible by opening the arteries on the sides of the neck with a very sharp knife. Autumn and I were both very happy to let him do this part.

Then Caitlin scalds the birds by dipping them in 145 degree water for about a minute. This loosens the feathers so we can pluck them easily. You test them by plucking out some of the wing feathers. If they come out easily, it's ready.

Autumn and I were the pluckers for the day. The Featherman machines have rubber "fingers" that spin on a motor, which helps the plucking go much faster.

After all the killing and plucking was done, we put the birds in ice water to stay cold over lunch.

At lunch time, we relaxed and messed around with the barn cat.

In the afternoon came the "fun" part - evisceration. Brian started by removing the head, feet and crop from the bird. Then Caitlin, Autumn or I got to do the work of removing all its organs.

See that vivid shade of taxicab yellow? That is the color that chicken fat should be. These are pastured birds that are free to roam outside, eating grass and bugs and living the good chicken life. That fat is full of all sorts of nutritious and delicious stuff. And damn, does it taste good.

Also, the birds we processed were all three years old - pretty ancient for a laying chicken. Most large farms don't keep birds around after one year.

And sometimes, you might find a surprise.

*Actually, we processed chickens back in July too. But I didn't really get very many pictures that time.

The Pied Piper of Chickens

Whenever I go to feed the chickens, I feel like the Pied Piper of Hamlin.

Let's Meet the McFuzzersons - Baby Chicks Galore

For the last few weeks, we've been keeping an eye on a chicken who was sitting on a nest in the pole barn, where the goat kids are located. The eggs started hatching the other day, but we waited until this morning to move them to a safer spot.

But look how fuzzy!

The nest had sixteen eggs, but seven didn't hatch, and two of the chicks didn't make it. So we ended up with seven fuzzy little chicklets running around and cheeping their heads off, in addition to their mama.

Mama Chicken was not pleased when we took her away from the nest. She pooped something quite smelly all over everything and made some very indignant noises. The chicks then freaked out and ran under some nearby machinery, so we spent about twenty minutes moving things around so we could catch them. We used a cardboard box with straw in the bottom to transport them to one of the apiaries, where we'll wait for the little ones to grow up.

Anyways, the McFuzzersons are now happily reunited, safe and sound and fuzzy and warm in the front yard. And here I am in the house, safe and sound and warm and dry, while it rains like the dickens outside. Or perhaps I should say... like the chickens?


UPDATE: Two more chicks were found in the pole barn this afternoon, and the McFuzzersons are now up to nine little peeplets.

The Great Chicken Heist

It was the perfect night for a chicken heist.

Well, actually, that's not true. It was about 25 F last night and we were all freezing our tails off in the dark. But there was still beauty in the cold - the newly formed frost that crunched crisp and fresh under our feet, our breath billowing like steam in the beams of our headlamps, and the stars, undimmed by city lights and flickering above us in the frigid air.

Not that I had much time to observe such things. We were moving chickens.

It was a three part operation. Part One: Take down the fence and move the mobile chicken coop to the front yard. Part Two: Move the young chickens from the front yard coop into the mobile chicken coop with the rest of the chickens. Part Three: Move the mobile chicken coop to a new location and set up the fence.

The second part was where things got tricky. Susan, Caitlin (a part time worker on the farm) and I formed a daisy chain that went like this: Caitlin crawls into the tiny front yard chicken coop, grabs a chicken, and hands it to me. I pin down the chickens wings - or, for the roosters, hold them upside down by their feet - and carry the chicken out to Susan, who puts it in the big mobile coop. Easy as pie.

Well, maybe "easy" isn't the right word. For example, please examine Exhibit A - the fact that we were doing this in the dark wasn't because we just got too busy to do it earlier, but because, according to the theory, chickens are sleepy and therefore much more docile at night. We also turned our headlamps to infrared light for the endeavor, since chickens can't see infrared light, helping to preserve the atmosphere of calm and docility. Or so I'm told. Because if what I witnessed last night is evidence of chicken "docility", all I can say is I never want to move one when it's being feisty.

Who can blame them, really? I certainly wouldn't stay calm if some disembodied force came out of nowhere to pluck me from my nice warm bed and stuff me in a new one that was already inhabited by people who hate me for disturbing their rest. And based on last night's events, I think some of the chickens would say the same.

Regardless, the entire episode only took a little over an hour, and all things considered, the chickens were fairly well behaved, despite the inelegant interruption to their night. And in the end, it was yet another new and exciting experience to add to my list of things I would never have done if I weren't here.

Life on the Farm - Let's meet our contestants!

Who doesn't picture a farm without a some chickens, a cow in the distance, and a few cats killing mice in the barns? Although Brightwood Farm doesn't have all the most stereotypical livestock wandering around, Susan and Dean do have plenty of animals roaming their gently rolling hills - in fact, they were featured in a local paper today about raising heritage breeds. (Check out the article to learn a bit about the farm and to see a great picture of Susan with her heritage Indian Runner ducks.)

So without further ado, allow me to introduce the players - give it up for the inhabitants of Brightwood Vineyard and Farm!



From Left: Sadie, Izzie, Rosie

The donkeys - Sadie, Rosie and Izzie - are used for what Susan calls "fertility" (a euphamism meaning "manure"), which is used in their compost. Izzie is also Rosie's daughter - when Susan and Dean bought Rosie, they thought she was just getting fat. Au contraire, as they discovered one morning upon finding a slimmed down Rosie and a baby donkey with enormous ears.

Next up are the sheep. They are friendly. Very friendly. (PS: That is Isaac, the friendly WWOOF-er).

And what are sheep without goats? Feeding them is Caitlin, who works on the farm a couple days every week.



Juan the goat.

Naturally with all these tasty treats practically laying around for the taking, something must be done to protect them. That's where the guard dogs come in.



Charlie the dog.

Charlie hangs out with the sheep all day, in a field adjascent to a couple goats (Juan and Phil, a bottle baby goat) and the donkeys. (Charlie is also camera shy, so I had to be covert while lurking about shamelessly.) He is a Maremma Sheepdog, a breed of livestock guardian dog originally bred in central Italy.

Charlie has a brother, named Ben.

Ben guards the chickens.

And while we're on the subject of birds, let's not forget the ducks and Guinea fowl.

They might eat ticks, but Guinea fowl are still one of the most obnoxious birds on the planet.

Duck eggs - apparently great for baking.

There are actually more, but I won't make this entry any more unwieldy than it already is. You will have to wait to meet the rest until later.

Until next time...