This summer we had a super cool opportunity! We butchered our own chickens! I had been buying locally laid eggs from a co-worker for quite a few months. I finally asked him if we could get some meat too. The only stipulation was that we had to come help butcher! The deal was made! I made sure I brought the boys along too...every person should know where their meat comes from. They were all too excited to watch one run around with its head cut off.
Now Dave has the coolest plucker ever. He rigged this thing up to a drill so that when it was turned on it plucked a majority of the feathers off for us! The only major plucking we had to do was the pin feathers and a few random ones. By far made our job easier!
I thought I would be a little sad to see them alive and then butchering them right after but it really didn't bother me.
The boys didn't mind either. They had to imitate the chickens of course. Including loud clucking noises in the woods.
Now the boiling of the chicken was not the best smell, but we were in the wide open and no smell stayed too long.
Emmitt kept saying how heavy the chicken was. They were HUGE birds!
It took Parker a little longer to want to hold the chicken, but he wasn't about to let his little brother show him up.
Now this smell may have been the worst there was. Burn hair was all I could think of. But it was one of the very last steps in the process.
Farm girl Audrey had to see if she could remember the butchering process. It had been quite a few years but she got right back in there and it all came back to her.
The boys had a BLAST standing in the shooting lane of the flying feathers! All three of them were laughing pretty hard!
Total boy...covered in feathers and playing with a chicken foot.
The final stage of packaging chickens. We ended up with five really big birds!
And we promptly made beer-butt chicken for dinner that night. Talk about fresh!!
