Summer loving

My deepest apologizes for the failure to keep writing and updating this blog.  The truth is the daily grind of maintaining two and half acres takes its toll on my creative writing juices (believe me, being this cheeky takes a lot of effort).  Interesting content comes at a premium these long, glorious summer days unless you enjoy reading minutia.   Would you really care to know that I took out the fava beans and planted broccoli this weekend?  Probably not unless I added that I had the fava beans with some human liver and a nice chianti.

It is a rare for this part of the country to have a sun-filled consistently warm summer.  Our winter was relatively mild without much rain so the vegetable garden got an early rototilling which did wonders for our potato crop.  These Yukon Gold potatoes was planted April 20th and without irrigation the plants started dying necessitating harvest.  The problem with the fruit of your labor is all of the vegetables that you have to process.   Might be time to brew some vodka.

The summer has been filled with trellising cucumbers and peas; planting acorn, butternut and summer squash, cutting garlic scapes; caging tomatoes; watering fennel; culling leeks, thinning lettuce; sowing kale; harvesting strawberries and eating raspberries.

All of the yard waste goes into the newly constructed compost center which was made from cast-off lumber from the old garden fence.  The rub is that if you take down an old garden fence you have to put one up in its place lest you concede all of your hard work to the deer and chickens.

Serious composting.

Not all of the summer botany has been wasted.  What was formerly consigned to the compost pile or the chickens now gets fed to the pigs.  This year, we got five tiny piglets at the end of May.  The pigs were advertised as Berkshire/Duroc mixes but judging by some of the coloration there must also be some Hampshire too. Incidentally, whenever you buy piglets, try to get the biggest and smartest ones possible. 

Our pigs were barely weaned and so small that they easily escaped through the hog panel.  Lola, our Golden Retriever, did a decent job of corralling them before we could entice them back into the pen.  This happened many times and we were glad that two of the piglets belonged to our neighbor who bore the brunt of piglet roundups.

Escape artists.

In years past, the pigs were purchased in the late winter and slaughtered by June.  This year, we hope to do the slaughter ourselves which necessitates either a walk-in freezer or cold enough temperatures to hang an animal in the garage.  Round these parts, late October or early November is slaughter time.

The advantage to having pigs in the summer and fall is being able to feed them garden excess and scraps.  Pigs love watermelon, peas vines, egg shells, apples, raw potatoes, grass clipping and rose hips.  Pretty remarkable living composter.

Rose hips.

This years' pigs are from the same litter but they are of disparate sizes and dispositions.  The largest pig is almost twice as big as the runtiest.  The runt is a small female piebald-colored sweetheart.  She has the cutest eyelashes and is very patient at the tough which may explain why she is the smallest.  Her older brothers are predominantly black with some white markings.  They can be brutish and not very bright.  Just this evening one of the pigs got his snout caught in the fencing and then proceeded to scream like he had just been stuck.  See for yourself.

Einstein the pig.

Fingerlicking good

It is judgment day for some of our chickens.  Over a hundred days have passed since we picked up forty little chicks from the local feed store.  Within a week, we lost half.  Some were lost to gross negligence (one chick was crushed by the mobile pen) while others were killed by marauding raccoons who pulled chicks through the wire and gnawed their heads off.  Other chicks were taken by hawks and one chicken was mauled by Lola, our nine-month old Golden Retriever.   A more accurate way of putting it would be that all of the chicks were lost due to negligence.  The failure to fence the chicks well enough, shoot the raccoons or hobble Lola all falls on us, the newbie farmers.  Not even sure we can be called newbies now that we are in our third year of hobby farming but we going to ride that excuse till the cows come home.

Sexy home grown birds.

Regrets and laments aside, we eventually worked out a routine for the little cluckers.  Eventually we integrated them into the main coop with our full grown laying hens.  We had close to twenty-eight birds at one point eating upwards of fifty pounds of feed a week.  When the birds were not busy shitting everywhere they were out devouring every last bit of living vegetation in our garden save the late planted fava beans.  The feathered locusts managed to put on weight albeit at a snail’s pace thanks to their vigorous exercise routine practiced in the vegetable garden.  Most meat birds are ready at eighty days.  To be fair, those birds also develop problems due to their rapid growth so we opted out of the overbred frankenbirds.

While we lost all possible over-wintering vegetables we gained freedom from having to rototill and weed the  garden.   In addition, we were going to get some good eats from those filthy beasts.  Farming, from a macro-perspective, represents life’s zero sum game. 

Slaughter and butchering animals gets easier the more you do it (but it still is horrible says the wife).  Chickens have a very particular odor that can be tough to take.  Combine that with pulling their guts out and cutting their anuses out and you got the impetus for vegetarianism.  Once you get over the initial miasma it gets pretty rote.

Here is an overview.

Step one.  Choose your victim.  We go first for the roosters as they mature the quickest and are the biggest and most obnoxious birds around.  When they start to crow at five in the morning you will promptly make plans for their slaughter.

Step two.  Capture your victim.  Chickens are not the wiliest of creatures.   We use a net and keep the gate of their run closed.  Grab the chicken by its feet and hang it upside down and it will remain remarkable calm completely unaware of what lies in its future.

Step three.  Break its neck and slit its throat.  Granted this is the morose part but who said that slaughter was supposed to be fun?  We use a long iron bar to pin the chicken’s head against the ground with its eyes on top.  A foot on the bar will hold the bird down.   A few nice words are said thanking the bird for its life and then its feet are pulled over the bar breaking its neck.  If you pull hard enough you will pull the body away from its body.  We try to avoid this because the contents of its croup spill out all over the place depending on where the separation occurs.  Instead, slits its throat promptly to bleed it.

The bird will flap its wings involuntary and may jerk around in a disconcerting way.  Eventually this will stop.  If done properly, there is very little movement but it can still be difficult to witness.

Ouch.  That's gonna leave a mark.

Step four.  Blanch and pluck.  Set a big pot of water to boil.  We do this outside as plucking can be very messy.  Fortunately, we own a 155000 BTU propane burner that is used to make beer.   After several highly scientific tests, we found that the best temperature to pluck is between 155 and 165 degrees.

Scald the bird in the water for a minute or two.   Remember, there is a fine line between blanching the bird and cooking it.  The feathers will come out quickly and cleanly.  If your water is too cool then you will have trouble removing the pin feathers in the tail and the primary flight feathers on its wings.  It should take about five minutes a bird depending on how fastidious you want to be. 

There will be stray hairs and feather remnants in the skin.  Use a blow torch and flame away these bits.

Blanch(e Dubois).  "Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable."

Step five.  Gut.  This is the diceyest part of the whole process because you are dealing with crap, real live crap.  Start by cutting into the chest cavity being careful not the puncture the croup.  The croup is the bulge at the base of the neck where the bird collects its food.  If you can, sever the croup and toss.  Any spillage will be eaten by the other birds which is kind of nasty (the other chickens are not actually eating any part of the recently deceased, just spilled grain) but those birds will likely get their croup grains eaten by other birds thus fulfilling the circle of life.  (Queue the song from the Lion King).

Cut around the anus which incidentally is the same orifice used by the chickens to lay their eggs.  See Louie C.K.’s bit about duck vaginas and you'll get the idea.  Keep cutting until you have separated the digestive track from all on the connecting tissue.  If you have done it right, you will be able to reach into the cavity and yank all of the guts out without getting any poop on yourself.  Be forewarned that putting your hand into a bird’s cavity is not for the faint hearted because it will be very visceral and still warm.

You might save the liver for pate and maybe even the heart.

Rinse the cavity and the entire bird and thoroughly clean everything before going on to the next bird.

Step six.  Hang or package your chicken.  It is up to you what you want to do with the carcass at this point.  You can refrigerate it, freeze it, hang it or cook it.  Bear in mind that chicken can go bad pretty quick so you will want to manage it accordingly.  In the past, we have cooked the birds right away but their bodies always seem so rigid like they are still in shock from being slaughtered.

Free bird!

This time, we hung the chickens in the garage overnight because the temperatures were below freezing.  Letting the bird hang a day or two mellows out the flesh.

Congratulations.  You have slaughtered and processed your first chicken.  Now repeat nineteen more times for the remaining birds.

Note the body language of the chickens.  They are saying, "Holy shit, they cut our heads off and roasted our asses."

The final verdict: The birds are delicious. Tougher than store bought and more gamey too but brimming with chicken goodness. The schmaltz was a lovely yellow which is how it should be.