The Meat Birds are in! (done in?)

Yesterday it rained lightly all morning.  No matter: the meat birds and turkeys still had to be caught and put in cages, and brought up to the house/barn to await “portable chicken killing man” as we call him: Ray Garcia, from Cabin View Farms, in Littleton, N.H.  He drove up at around 10:30, in his big ol’ truck, pulling one of those big white trailer/boxes behind.  After greetings, and introductions to the Springfield Eagle Times reporter, here to interview him and take photos (before the killing began: who wants to see photos of chickens with their necks being cut off?), he opened the back of the box.  On the one door is a price list; on the other is two killing cones, under which he put two large garbage cans, lined with sturdy plastic bags.  The cones dip down into the cans so you can’t actually see the necks being pierced, and the blood…very discreet, for those who are squeamish.  Then, out came the big plucking machine, the propane heating coil and huge bucket, and a tarp so the feathers don’t end up all over the driveway.  Then, he hooked up to my electricity and water, filled the bucket/pot over the heating coil, lit that, put some soap in the bucket with the water, and a thermometer and it began to heat.  Meanwhile, he got some ice from the back of his monster pick up, put it in a big tub in back of the white box trailer, and filled that with cold water.  Then, he scrubbed his knives and counter surfaces, and we brought the cages with the turkeys in them close to his center of operation.  The reporter, Julia Lloyd Wright, left before the killing began.  Four hours later, we had several empty cages, 43 chickens (40 meat birds and 3 marans roos from a summer hatch, still small, but good for soup) and 8 turkeys, in plastic bags.  Lucas, once again saving my life by coming and making this all happen, my wrist still in fixator, precluding lifting, and getting dirty, brought the birds in, I weighed them, and we stuffed them in the refrigerators (one upstairs, one in basement) to cool off for 24 hours. Today, in shifts, I’ll carry a few at a time and put them in the deep freeze in the barn.  We have our poultry in the freezer for the year.  That also means five fewer waterers and four fewer feeders to attend to each day.  And, all the laying hens are transferred to winter quarters, right next to the sheep. Three of the four roos are in the ram pen for the winter, scrounging food from their supply, eating worm eggs (are there any?) from the ram poop, which helps with worm load enormously.  I throw them some organic whole grain each day when I feed the rams, and they run around pecking and eating the grains of corn and soybeans and wheat while the sheep eat their rations.  Twelve more days and the sheep go back in gender groups for the winter, eliminating another two waterers and pens to haul grain and hay to each day.  In some ways, winter is much easier: you just have to carefully navigate the path from house to shed, when ice and snow are there…which is often for the snow, occasionally for the ice.  That freezer is going to be chock full of food…and the beef quarter comes in December.  I wonder if I”ll need another freezer…then there’s the lamb to be slaughtered in January…well, I could put that off a little, and she’s small, wpn’t yield all that much meat, maybe 15 or 20 pounds…Well, there’s always the neighbors’ freezers, I guess.

Tomorrow, theoretically, the fixator comes off.  The doc assures me that unscrewing these four metal posts from my bones and ripping them through my flesh won’t hurt.  I’ll let you know!