We slaughtered our first animal. The first chicken has been killed, plucked, and eaten. It was not our intention originally to use our chickens for meat, but when we realized one of the four pullets our landlady gifted us was in actuality a rooster, we decided to use him or meat. Our one rooster is loud enough and handles his job quite well by himself, so we for sure do not need two roosters running around here.
If you have never harvested an animal before, as I had never done, it goes a bit like this:
First you have to catch the animal. And as we all know, this is not something that we are very good at around here. It actually proved to be the toughest job of the evening. We decided that once the chickens roosted for the night, that would be the time to catch him. Tirzah was all settled in bed and Daniel and I headed out to the coop. Daniel, bare handed and ready for an all out war, and me with the MagLite in hand. My job was to scope out which chicken he was, aim the light there, and then close the door behind Daniel once he was inside. Chicken spotted, Daniel moved inside and the door was shut. It was all quiet and all nerves. I couldn't help but sing Jesus Lives Me out loud to everyone involved.
With one quick swoop Daniel had the chicken and quickly turned him upside down. Holding them this way sort of paralyzed them momentarily, they don't try as hard to get away. So just like that he had the chicken and we quickly moved the operation to the garage, where Daniel hung him by the feet and deftly slit his throat. I couldn't watch that part but I turned to watch the after math and was quite surprised to see how much jolting and movements the body made even after the animal was dead. It's awful, but I do know now where the saying comes from: "running around like a chicken with its head cut off." Thank goodness this chicken stayed in one spot.
Second comes the plucking. And oh my. The first animal that I had seen freshly killed was when Daniel shot the deer in Greg and Marlene's back yard, almost two years ago. I have never been so up close and personal with death, literally takin hold of this animal and plucking out the feathers just minutes after death. He was still warm with life, very warm actually. And I couldn't help but think: "who does this for all of the chickens in the grocery stores?" The plucking probably took half an hour or more and in a few spots we did tear the tender skin. Before we moved inside, Daniel removed the head and the chicken began to look more and more like what I was used to. I kept thinking: I don't know if I can eat a store bought chicken again. How far removed life is from the food we eat now a days, if that makes any sense. To think I had never seen this process and I had been eating chicken my whole life. It was quite disturbing but quite awakening as well.
Inside, Daniel began the really messy inside-the-chicken cleaning. Before this began I thought: oh sure I have seen gizzards! Yeah, the ones neatly packaged inside the Thanksgiving turkey. Well when Daniel had to cut the bottom away... Like literally, and then pulled out the first of organs I have to say I was a bit surprised. And let's talk about Daniel for a minute: how impressed I was with him! Never before has he harvested a chicken and he knew exactly what to do... I think he watched one YouTube video on plucking and then the rest, he figured out on his own. Amazing!
Within a few minutes he had the chicken cleaned and ready to refrigerate until use the next night. And what a meal we had. I have always been into the Sunday night dinners, loving the thought of making them fancy and more outdone than any other night of the week. And this one topped the charts: our dream come true! A complete homesteading meal with absolutely everything from this land.
Roast chicken stuffed with onions, rosemary, and sage
Roasted new potatoes, carrots, and onions
Roasted green beans.
It was a fulfilling feast to say the least! Hopefully one of many more to come.
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