chicken is chicken?

ATTENTION LISA RUTH KODMUR. DO NOT READ THIS POST.
or anyone who feels squeamish about slaughtering animals for food, I guess. which, if you don't eat meat, you're totally entitled to your opinion, but if you eat meat and you still don't want to read this, then I think you should take a look at what's behind that.

ok, now that that's out of the way, happiest of interdependance day to all. here in falls village, we celebrated yesterday by killing 67 chickens, watching fireworks, singing loud and not quite so tuneful patriotic songs, and eating some of the aforementioned chicken in a fried manner.

our friend cody works on a farm down the road and as a side project he raised some meat birds to sell, and yesterday was their fateful day. I heard cody got up at 4am to turn on the scalder, but the rest of the crew got up at a more reasonable hour of 7am and made it over by 8 to start the day off. we formed a loose game plan, said a few words, and got things going.

going from 'a chicken' to 'chicken' has the following basic steps: killing, scalding, plucking, eviscerating, final clean. we all jumped around from station to station depending on what needed to be done, or perhaps what you felt your particular aptitude was - meg's a big fan of the plucker. I'd never killed anything before (if you don't count the squirrel I ran over on my bike by accident) so I wasn't quite sure how it would affect me, but I felt okay about it. As a eater and enjoyer of meat, I think it's important to acknowledge that I know where the meat actually comes from and not shy away from it. I slaughtered about ten of them - we put them in kill cones (upside down traffic cones) and cut their throats so they bled out, which is a fairly humane way to do it - they bleed out in a manner of seconds and - I was going to say that it was fairly painless, but not having been through the process  I guess I can't say that - but I will say that they didn't appear to suffer. then they get dipped in the scalder, a large container of water holding at 145 degrees, for about a minute. it's good to get multiple dunks, something about the air between the dipping really loosens the feathers. then to the plucker, which was a large box with a rotating drum covered with rubber 'fingers' which spun around. the technique is to hold the chicken by the feet and kinda throw it on there, turning it all about so the plucker gets all surfaces - it's kind of like driving a slightly out of control car, if that car also had a dead chicken for a steering wheel.

then on to the gutting - I don't know how many I gutted, but it was a lot. we saved the livers, hearts and feet for sale, and the rest goes to the compost. the tricky part is getting the gallbladder off the liver without puncturing it, which if that happens necessitates junking the liver and a whole table spraydown. I definitely refined my technique as the day went on. then there's the final cleanup, rinsing off and getting the last feathers, and off the chicken went into a tub of cold water to await purchase by a happy customer.

it took us about 5 hours to do all 67 birds (we're not professionals here) and then we collapsed in a gross sweaty stinky mess to eat lunch and lie in the shade. here's emi showing off the final product:

we love america

then, after a very unsatisfactorily short nap, I fried up one of the chickens, meg roasted one, we threw some blankets in the car and headed off to the lime rock raceway, our local racetrack, for fireworks! 

for some off reason the fireworks around here are on the 3rd, but that's ok. we had a great picnic, ate some delicious food and saw some great fireworks. afterwards we hung out for an extra hour or so to avoid the massive traffic jam in the parking lot and sang every america song we could think of.

today, some bbqing and lawn games. tomorrow, back to work. happy 4th!