Butchering Day for Chickens

So your first response maybe ewww gross. If that is the case perhaps you should skip this post. I don't know if it my health and the way I've been feeling lately but I feel driven to share true stories. I am sharing these with my family and friends maybe to have something to read when I'm gone and laugh at. Maybe it is just helping me to feel like I'm doing something instead of just waiting and waiting.

My Dad is Native American. Back when I was a little girl we just called ourselves Indians. Now that is not PC. We are from the Chumash Tribe of Central California. My Dad grew up with 3 brothers and 1 sister that could take down any boy in the family. She is that tough. I adore her and she is the baby of the family. Well, times were tough for anyone during the great depression and my Dad has often told me he didn't know that they were poor because everyone was poor. He grew up with my Grandma making breakfast, lunch and supper. Not sandwiches but really heating the house up with a wooden stove to cook the meals. Always fresh hand made tortillas at every meal and always, always something sweet. Well, out of all of my Dad's siblings, he has strayed the least from the "old ways". We grew up eating beans at almost every meal and raising our own veggies and meat. 

I've mentioned before that my younger sister and I grew up on a ranch miles from town but I didn't mention we had a farm right in town. We lived in an old 2 story house that was very drafty. There were six of us kids including my two brothers that I've not mentioned too much yet. We lived in the city limit and we had a huge chicken,duck,turkey, chucker, peasant coop. I mean, it could have been another room. Well, when the spring first sprang.... My dad would order eggs from a mail order catalog. No joke, you used to be able to do that. So he would pour over his catalogs deciding what kind of eggs to order and within a week we had about 3 dozen eggs. This brings us to our kitchen.... We had a huge table in the kitchen. Enough to sit all 6 kids, 2 parents and any friends that my older brothers and sisters had over for dinner. There was an enormous white chest freezer in that room too. It was full of meat and bread from a place called, "the bread store". The bread store was actually a hostess or Wonder bread outlet where the breads were a bit old so they sold them cheaper. With 6 kids it was important to save every penny. 

Back to the eggs. My Dad had this round machine that plugged into the wall that the eggs were placed in and a little water I think for humidity. It is called an incubator. We were not allowed to touch the eggs but my dad would allow us to watch each night as he carefully and lovingly turned each egg like a mother hen would do. Sooner than you know it but not soon enough for two curious little girls, the eggs would hatch. The soft downy feathers of the little yellow and white chicks was so special. Once all the eggs hatched and they were now baby chicks, They all graduated to a tall brown cardboard box. In the bottom of this box was newspapers and lids from pickle jars etc. filled with chicken feed and water. During this time my mom would lose a living room lamp to be on 24/7 over the box. My dad would take the shade off of the lamp and the heat from the lamp kept the babies warm. My sister and I delighted in gently picking them up and kissing them..... so much for bird flu! We were so loving towards the baby chicks that often our chore was to put new newspaper in the bottom of their box.  This was especially fun times when the chickens got their flying feathers. The soft downy feathers were replaced with sharp pin feathers. The once cute baby chicks got homely. They were no fun to play with anymore. They also wouldn't stay in the box. No sir not even if you offered them a million dollars they would fly up, up, up until they landed on the edge of the box looking down at what was their former cage. This was a good thing because that meant that they were growing up and would soon enough be able to be butchered and put into the freezer. I told you we lived old school. 

I loved all of the animals that we had to care for growing up but I have to admit to this day I don't like the actual killing of the animals. Once the animal is dead, I'm that girl that can get in there and pluck feathers and pull out guts but the actual killing really makes me sad. 

Butchering day was not looked upon as a good day, not just for the chickens. It meant we all had to pitch in and help. After cutting the chicken's heads off they really do run around "like a chicken without a head". If you've never had the pleasure of seeing this first hand it is pretty scary. The next thing to do is to dip the freshly killed chicken into hot water to make his feathers easier to pluck. This chore is also especially disgusting as the smell of wet feathers is disgusting. I mean I can handle lots of things before I have an upset stomach so it isn't that bad but it is pretty nasty. Once every single tiny feather has been plucked then Dad and my brother's would gut them and rinse them and then my mom and older sisters were on.... They were to clean them really well and cut them up and wrap them so they were freezer ready. 

The entire process took most of the day but I would never change a minute of it for anything. 

A special shout out to my baby sister for this one time when we lived on the ranch. The older siblings had since moved out so my baby sister and I were the helpers for all butchering and stuff. I was always the tough guy. Fearless on the outside terrified of what people thought of me on the inside. I rarely showed fear. This particular day, my dad was killing the chickens with an axe. He would let it go because they flop and flop around and this particular headless chicken decided to run under the fence into the cow pasture. This chicken looked like he was on a mission. He was running straight down the hill to God only knows where. My dad asked me to go get the chicken before he went too far. I had been doing this all day so I casually mentioned to my dad that I think it was my baby sister's turn. My dad agreed. She balked quite a bit but my Dad would not let up. My baby sister climbed under the fence and was going towards this headless chicken who by this time had slowed way down. Just before she reached him it was like he sensed her there, now I know how silly that sounds since he didn't have a head, but he turned and ran right at my sister. He chased my baby sister up the hill all the way back to where he started from. That terrified my baby sister and it was the last time she ever had to chase down a headless chicken. 

All that said, there truly is something for the simple life. Now we buy our chickens and eggs from the stores and they are pumped full of steroids and who knows what else. I myself will take a home raised chicken any time!