vituperation

How is the Spud doing lately?

She’s fine; busy at work and getting ready for school to start.

And with the exception of the mozzarella that meal is looking pretty darn vegan. It’s a slippery slope, better get some chicken or pork on the plate quickly.

That’s coming soon.

We love having all-veggie meals from time to time, but meat makes a body strong. And it’s tasty. If animals don’t want to be eaten, they should evolve to taste like broccoli.

What are the two things in the top half of that picture? Looks like a mini crepe with skinny bananas next to it?

That would be oven-fried pattypan (aka scalloped) squash, the finest squash there is. The skinny bananas are oven-fried okra.

…you might get better production from some of your squash & tomatoes by popping off the first set of blossoms from the plants.

I think Robyn might shoot me if I tried to bring in more squash. If you take a look inside our big freezer —

— everything that has a red square around it is squash. We’re covered until next season.

Tomatoes, on the other hand…

The rule of thumb to gauge the weight of a hog is to use some simple math. Measure the hog (which is what a pig over 125 pounds is called) around the chest right behind the front legs, and down the spine from between its ears to the base of its tail. The formula is:

(girth * girth * length) / 400 = # pounds

Based on that formula, big pig weighs about 211 pounds and little pig weighs about 145.

Their days are numbered, and they’ll probably head to the processor sometime at the end of August or beginning of September.

Humorously, I’d flip-flopped back over to wanting to take care of slaughtering them myself until I did the weight thing. Backyard processing is only easily doable when it’s cool / cold out, which August in Alabama is not.

Random thoughts on killing a chicken…

- Catching Flappy was a huge ass-pain. The best time to catch a chicken is when they’re roosting in the evening (or first thing in the morning). Catch ‘em, cage ‘em, and kill ‘em at your leisure. However, I knew that if I put off killing Flappy until this morning, I’d lay awake all night obsessing about it

As it turned out, I laid awake half the night because a fucking STRAY DOG showed up at 1:15 this morning and barked incessantly right outside the side door, necessitating a trip outside to check on things. The fucker ran when I went out the door and the motion lights came on, but I was up. Coming out of a dead sleep, getting dressed, going down stairs and shutting off an alarm, racking a shell into the shotgun, and stumbling around the yard for ten minutes does that to a man.

because that’s the kind of guy I am. I dreaded it all day as it was, because I felt sorry for her. But, you know what? That’s one less factory chicken we’ll be eating.

- Robyn came through in the clutch, and thought to use an old gate to corral Flappy into a corner so I could catch her. She was perfectly calm when I picked her up. That, or she was resigned.

- To make a kill spot, I took the big stump out of the pig yard, cleaned it, and screwed a piece of 2×6 to the top so the chickens we plan to kill won’t actually be touching what the pigs rubbed on. I drove two large nails into the 2×6, about an inch apart, and left about 1.5 inches sticking up. When the killing time came, I just slipped Flappy’s neck between the two nails and gently pulled on her body to stretch her neck out. Her head was too big to fit between the nails, and they held her in place.

- She didn’t squawk, flap, or seem panicked at all.

- Because we were new to the killing thing, we knew it would take both of us to ensure a good job. Robyn wanted to do the chopping, while I held Flappy. I have to say, I was a little bit of a naysayer myself, because I half-expected she wouldn’t be able to swing the hatchet when the time came, but she did it like a champ.

- That phrase, “ran around like a chicken with its head cut off,” doesn’t begin to describe what happens when the chicken’s nerves go haywire. When Flappy’s head separated from her body, it was like a live wire had been plugged into her neck stump. She was dead, but her body didn’t seem to realize it. She flapped and thrashed and twisted in my hands for about 15 seconds , spraying me with fine droplets of blood. She almost got away from me because I wasn’t expecting the reaction to be so strong. When the flailing stopped, the body flexed and stretched, talons clutching at the air. It took about 30 seconds for her to completely stop moving.

- After her chop, Robyn turned away and didn’t watch the ensuing activity.

- We tied a piece of cord around Flappy’s legs and hung her upside down for about 20 minutes to bleed out. Robyn went inside at this point and didn’t see Flappy again until she was on a plate.

- Plucking her was WAY easier than I thought it would be. A quick dip-n-swirl into hot water (it should be about 60 seconds in 140 degrees, but my water was hotter, so I only did her for about 30 seconds), and the feathers practically fall off. The only bad thing about the plucking, other than the smell of wet chicken, is that the wet feathers stick to your hands. The only feathers I didn’t pluck were the tail feathers and the big flight feathers. It took 7 or 8 minutes to pluck her, not bad at all.

- Once plucked, I took her to the cleaning area (a large cutting board on the air conditioner unit in the back yard) and got her prepared in about ten minutes. This is the gross part, so you may want to skip to the next bullet. I used a knife to remove the tips of her wings and the oil gland at the base of her tail. I sliced into the base of her neck on either side, and twisted the neck off. With my fingers, I loosened her crop (which was full, and easy to find. Yes, I know about the school of thought that says to starve them for 12 hours beforehand) so it would pull through. Next, I pinched the skin right above her vent and sawed through it just enough to make a hole to get a finger in. I used my hands to tear that hole bigger (using a knife for this, you risk perforating the intestines and contaminating the meat), so I could reach up inside her to scoop out the innards. And that’s all there is to it.

- Cleaning the carcass inside the house, I realized I’d missed her lungs, which are attached to the ribs. I had to squelch them out in pieces. They sure were gooshy and bright red.

- That last bullet was gross, too, so you may want to skip it.

- Despite having laid no eggs over the last several weeks, she had several yolks of varying sizes inside her.

- The grossest thing about sticking your whole hand in a dead chicken is how warm it is.

- Pigs love chicken guts and necks, apparently. The feet, wingtips, and head went into the trees for whatever scavengers want them.

- Robyn was amazed when she saw the final Flappy, because she didn’t expect her to look like a chicken from the store. I’m not sure what she thought Flappy would look like.

- The fact that Flappy had a name didn’t make killing her any harder. As well as we treat the chickens, they’re not pets. There will be much more death and destruction in the coming weeks, because the toddler roosters are starting to act rooster-like, which means there will be a culling (as opposed to a Cullen, which we also have). Two toddler roos tried to gang rape poor little crippled Charlie this morning. Also, McLovin has a date with the crock pot.

- Speaking of crock pots, that’s where Flappy will go, because chickens of that age are tough and not suitable for roasting. You need young ones for that.

- We’ll be having her for a fancy Sunday dinner, along with stuff from the garden and maybe some deviled eggs.

- Speaking of young chickens, two more (and maybe three as of yesterday) hens have gone broody, this time a speck and a black one, so I stuck eggs under each. I candled a couple of days ago, and we’ve got eight more chickies growing. I’ll probably stick some eggs under the third one (a buff) today, if she’s still broody. It’s like they WANT to give us food.