It took all day.
I woke up, walked the dogs, set things up, and we got to work. We streamlined all of it as much as we could, but we didn’t finish until about 6:30 pm.
We had chicken for dinner.
The killing part was the least exhausting, at least physically. When you kill a single chicken you can focus on what went wrong, when you kill a dozen chickens, you can see incremental improvement, and be proud of that. The plucking is what was the hardest. We’re seriously considering purchasing a proper industrial plucker in order to offer it up for loan to the community, I think people would put it to work, and they’re only like $300.
This whole affair, from that abomination of a chicken tractor to our lack of a plucker, to the increase of our scalding time, has been a study in incremental improvement.
I found myself thinking today as I was plucking in the sun, a few feet from the near-future location of my firewood shed / outdoor kitchen / plucking station, that this place will be unfathomable in 10 years. The firewood thing’ll be done by the winter, I’ll redo my office before springtime, then there’s the kids rooms, the future screened in porch, our ultimate vision for the shop, the kitchen, magic attic, camping platforms in the forest, a pergola, a leanto, the sauna...it’s more than enough work for a lifetime but even after a few percentage points of completion it’ll be a haven.
I found myself thinking today as I was plucking in the sun, a few feet from the near-future location of my firewood shed / outdoor kitchen / plucking station, that this place will be unfathomable in 10 years. The firewood thing’ll be done by the winter, I’ll redo my office before springtime, then there’s the kids rooms, the future screened in porch, our ultimate vision for the shop, the kitchen, magic attic, camping platforms in the forest, a pergola, a leanto, the sauna...it’s more than enough work for a lifetime but even after a few percentage points of completion it’ll be a haven.
The best bit is that I enjoy the process of getting from here to there. I didn’t always. There was a time when the shortcomings of today, and of this whole chicken-process, would have gotten me down on myself rather than energized me for all the ways it’ll be better in the future.
And hey, we have 16 chickens in our freezer.
I wanted a few more than one a month for the year, and we’ve got that.We didn’t before, and now we do.
And hey, we have 16 chickens in our freezer.
I wanted a few more than one a month for the year, and we’ve got that.