No More Chickens

This past weekend was a momentous occasion on Solace Farm - at least for us humans.  We finally got around to butchering the 50 meat chickens we've been raising for the last few months.  It went really well, I was very pleased with it.  

We had planned to do it the Saturday before, and asked a couple of friends if they wanted to help, since we still have no interns this summer.  They were wiilling, but only both available the 8th, so we waited one more week.  Last year we did 30 chickens, and had 2 interns with butchering experience, so we really, really didn't want to tackle 50 with no help!  It would have taken us at least both days for 2 weekends, I think.  In a nice moment of serendipity, two sets of WWOOFers contacted me last week, about coming down immediately, and one arrived late Friday night and the other two late Saturday morning.  We ended up having 3, then 5 people helping after all!  We started the process at about 9 am, and finished up before 4 that afternoon - 50 chickens, and their feet, necks, hearts, gizzards, and livers bagged and in the freezer!  That should be a generous years-worth for us, especially if we continue to have little intern activity around here.  I've really gotten fond of roasting 2 chickens at a time and having numerous meals off them with a single hour+ of oven time (an important consideration for both the lack of AC and our solar power, which struggles with much more than the fridge and freezer in the heat of summer).  50 chickens lets me do that every two weeks for almost the whole year :)  I gave the feet and necks to a friend for making broth for her special-needs son, so we just have to figure out what to do with the gizzards and livers.  None of us like liver - except in a pate recipe I have that involves about a pound of bacon (both in the mixture, and then individual pates are wrapped in bacon and baked crispy), and I just can't do that very often!  I've started substituting spicy sausage from our old ducks for some of the bacon, but it's still a time-consuming recipe.  I'm also not a fan of the texture of gizzards.  What we often do with liver is simply add it to any other meat we're grinding - we add up to 10% liver without noticing it, other than it really adds moisture to the meat, a good thing for lean, grassfed beef or goat.  We'll probably just add the gizzards and hearts as well, they're both muscles actually, rather than organs, so they'll fit right in, so to speak!

So, you may be thinking that we have 3 interns now.  Nope.  The first to arrive, very late Friday, left by 6 am Sunday without a word.  We assume, as usual, that he didn't think this was a great fit for him - we really can't argue with that either, apparently his time was mostly spent skating and surfing.  It's a little annoying since he had voluntarily said he'd let us know before he moved on, but still - probably better overall.  Recently, I'd been trying to screen more thoroughly, to avoid disppointment, but had started wondering if I should return to my approach to WWOOFers the first two year - "we'd love help come on down!".  I did that this time, and I'd say the screening wasn't the problem :)  

The second WWOOFers were a young Chinese couple, studying at Vanderbilt. They were really great, we were impressed with how they jumped right into the chicken-butchering after expressing strong hesitance via email about the process.  She helped with most stages, and was herself impressed with how her boyfriend actually killed them as well!  They were really helpful, loved the animals and the boys, but decided they were just too out-of-place here and uncomfortable without the austerity of country living, and left Sunday afternoon.  Unlike the other recent departures, though, they actually told us, with great regret and apology, so we know why they changed their minds - much less frustrating for us! 

At this point in the year, there is of course a million things we could find to do for interns, but we're managing fine. The important thing was getting help for the butchering, and that worked out better than we could have imagined, so we're happy with even that much help.  It just couldn't have been more fortuitously timed!  

We're going to combine the animal herds and save Caleb some AM and PM time - that's about all he does here on a weekday, and the days are already getting shorter - although not having to feed and water 50 chickens twice a day is a big time-savings!  My tomatoes are virtually dead  (and exceptionally bad year for hornworms), except the cherries, so that isn't nearly as big a job as usual, and that's the one that normally consumes my July, August, and September.  Eggs are down by at least half, so there's much less egg-washing to be done (although my pasta sales are doing well, 6 pounds this week!), and I haven't done housework beyond the absolutely necessary in several months, so why should I start now? :)

All in all, while we'd of course love help, this summer just doesn't seem to want us to have more than a day at a time, and we're learning to adapt, prioritize, and manage anyway - a good lesson for all of us, really.