I take a lot of chicken videos with my phone.

Super busy school craziness.

I'll post again in a couple of days.

Well, that was interesting.

Braden and I slaughtered and processed our first two chickens this morning. Of course, it didn't go quite as planned. I took a few pictures for the blog, but I have to wait until the card reader comes back from the shop tonight to post them. For now, I'll just list a few things I learned from today, so I won't forget them in the future, and also list some random chicken slaugherin' facts so you can wow your friends at parties (and then watch them throw up):

1) In the future, chickens need to be slaughtered outside of the garage. We did the deed inside, because we live in a neighborhood and not in bum fuck. However, despite me having a bleed bucket and a large tarp, blood managed to get all over the white garage door and floor.

2)If blood splatters on something that you don't want it to, clean it up immediately. If you don't, it will coagulate in just a few minutes, and it really really sucks to clean up later.

3)Braden and I both learned that it doesn't seem any more humane to stun your chicken first before cutting it's throat. I won't go into details, but the first rooster did not have a good time.

4)Despite what some people say, 140-150 degrees is too hot too to scald your dead chicken in. When the water is too hot, the chicken's skin will tear upon plucking. On the second chicken, I scalded at just around 130 degrees for more than 30 seconds, and there was very very minimal tearing(which probably came from my oaf hands).

5)Once the chicken is out of the scalder, pluck that bastard quick!

6)Guts are stinky. Smelled just like the raccoon guts back in the fall, so I am going to make the assumption that all guts smell like that.

7)I am a pussy. Braden was much much better at killing the chickens.

8)Have a chair handy. And some coffee. Plucking pin feathers is tedious work.

9)Even though I didn't believe the websites I had read, chickens do in fact have hair. A grill lighter is wonderful for singeing these off.

10)Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution is delightful to listen to on the laptop while you eviscerate your fowl. That show is pretty douchey, but it helps you remember why you're cutting an anus out of a chicken.

Tomorrow is the big day. Two lucky roosters will wake at dawn to stretch their wings and try out their new crows for the last time. They've had an astronomically better life than the majority of chickens in this country. They were hatched out naturally by mom, raised by mom, and have spent the past four months happily wandering around the yard eating grass, grubs, and delectables from the holy compost pile. They've actually been able to see real daylight! What a concept! At four months of age, they're almost old geezers by modern day chicken farm standards.

We have a total of 9 chickens that will be processed(nice term, eh?) over the next month, but we're starting with just two this weekend. When I was very young, my parents slaughtered our own chickens, and one of the earliest memories I have at that age is of my mom sitting on a bucket, plucking chickens that were hanging from the truck tailgate. However, my parents never really liked the mess and labor that went along with processing your own, and they had stopped probably before I even reached elementary school.

If you ask my parents about it now, they'll say it's just easier to buy a chicken from the store, and they're right. Chicken is cheap. I can buy an 8 lb. "natural" broiler (whatever that really means) for sometimes as low as $7, and I know I can get multiple meals out of that $7. So, yeah, it's cheap and easy. What isn't easy is trying to forget where that chicken came from. The likely conditions that chicken lived in are some of the major reasons I was vegan for 10 years(more on that another time). Conditions aside, most of the chickens we buy at the store are Cornish X broilers...a chicken hybrid that was bred to turn into an extremely heavy full grown fowl in just 8 weeks(unlike heritage breeds). Often the chickens hearts and hips can't keep up with this accelerated growth, and so they spend a lot of their time "down", laying in their own shit. Anyone who has ever changed a diaper knows what happens to a child's skin if left in prolonged contact with feces. Imagine spending your short life like this. There is a turkey broiler at the horse farm I work at on the weekends. He was found by the road near the Tyson processing plant, so he must have somehow fallen from a truck. Someone brought him back to the horse farm about a month ago, and placed him in the chicken pen. My boss says she has never seen him stand up and walk, so suspected he had a broken leg. I checked him out, and nothing's broken. Sadly, since he's a broiler he has a hard time standing for more than a couple minutes.(He really just needs to be put out of his misery.) Broilers are bad news. In addition to all of this, the majority of livestock in this country are kept alive on grain, which is another long rant I could go on, but won't. Basically, it's not good for chickens, and it's really not good for the nutritional makeup of the meat. THEN there's the ecological impact from these massive farms....

Of course, there are options available for some of us who don't want to support that kind of chicken farming. The Belmont Butcher (on Belmont in the museum district) is an amazing source for local grass fed meat. You can join a local CSA, and support farmers that are using sound practices. You can buy from a buddy out in such-and-such county, who keeps just a small flock. You can say fuck-it-all to pastoralism, and hunt your meat. You can not eat meat (but I would advise against that. It's good for you. It really is.). Lucky for me, I have enough of a yard, and kind enough neighbors, that I can raise my own. We'll eat these chickens over the next 4 or so months, and by the time we're out of chicken, we'll have some more ready to go into the freezer (we have two hens setting right now).

I'll probably be posting some pics from processing, as I've had a few people ask me how it's done. So, just be aware of that in case you don't want to see it. Wish me luck!

Upcoming Chicken Coop Tour

There is a semi-secret Richmond coop tour that will be happening towards the end of May, and my chicken coop will be one of the stops! What I mean by semi-secret is that the tour stops and guests lists are private since Richmond hasn't changed the zoning laws regarding chicken keeping, so obviously all of these coops are illegal and need to be kept on the DL. I need to get back to the coordinator today to find out all of the details, but I do know that a few businesses are sponsoring the tour and will be providing beer/food at each of the stops. Contact me if you want to know more.


(Chickens busting into the house.)

..

I feel awful, so I'm making soup with onion, lots of garlic, sweet potatoes, turkey, and kale from our garden. Kind of lame that the kale is the only thing I didn't purchase from the store, but at least it's still seasonal. The plan is that this time next year, all of those ingredients will have come from us (substitute chicken for turkey), and really there's no good reason for us to screw it up.

Speaking of chickens: This Sunday morning is chicken processing day for a couple of our jack ass roosters. F those guys!

Meeting neighbors

Two neighbors from the apartment building down the way came by to introduce themselves. An older couple. The old guy runs a DJ business, and the roly poly wife is a self proclaimed chef extraordinaire interested in cooking/eating locally. They wanted to see if I sold any of my eggs, and in the summer, if I sold my extra produce. They were REAL upset to hear that I sold Cochise (the rooster). We had a nice long chat about gardening, raising chickens and slaughtering them, bees, native plants, natural mosquito repellents, compost, Bedfored, VA, Kansas, and peak oil! They left with a dozen eggs that I tried to just give them, but they insisted on paying me $5. That was kind of nice actually, because I am broke!

(Cochise is that super handsome guy in the photo above. He was the dumbest bird I've ever met. Sigh.)

p.s. Dude's D.J. company is D.J. Lovin' Dan and Associates.

Oh lookey..

... I am resurrecting this blog thing.