No photos please

(warning this is not a post for you if your a vegetarian or don't want to really know about your food)

This time no photos for this post as I thought some farm scenes are just not as photogenic as others.

Today we killed and dressed three chickens they where the first three we've killed here at Big Table. While we are not total greenhorns as we have killed a bunch in Napa but with a new place new set up etc. there is always learning to be done.

We have the slaughter down pretty well. Very quiet and peaceful no flapping running etc. Quick clean slit to the jugular as they rest inside a cone upside down. This makes them go quiet and kind of "asleep-like it's really a nice way to do this not so nice job. Then we bleed them out and then into a hot water bath to loosen the feathers. This set up was thanks to Brian with a nice big tub and propane burner so we could make sure the h2o was exactly at the temp we wanted.

The butchering part of the set up was a cutting board set up on a high table on two saw horses. I won't go into all the evisceration details here but I did the first bird and Brian who hadn't done this part of the process yet did the next two to get practiced at it. Again I think we pretty much have it down but definitely getting the process more refined.

This "small test group" made us both feel pretty confident that we can get 20 or so broilers done for our own consumption in one session. So looks like I will be ordering some more peepers in about a month : ) (that will make for good blog photos) ... I feel lucky we can raise our own and be assured of them getting the best possible feed (grain and grass diet) and that they are slaughtered in a low stress, quick, humane way.

So all in all the process went very well and didn't take too long at all. We killed three roosters two young ones from our own babies that hatched back in Early September that was cool to bring things full circle. The other rooster we killed was Percy who is about 8 months older than the other two. All three will be made into chicken apple sausage by Brian with apples we picked from here in September also... maybe I should call the sausage September sausage even if you make it in January.

All in a days work now back at desk as I have huge amounts of design work stacked up it's a VERY busy time of year so back to the real world and the other 1/2 of my life.