Fried Chicken

Yesterday we had a huge farm fried chicken lunch made by Chris.

You can probably figure out what that means...

I cut the throat of a rooster. It was a fairly disturbing experience. As you might have imagined, I have never cut the throat of any living (or dead) thing before. I reacted badly, to be honest.

The process went like this: we wrangled a bunch of brown hens that we suspected were old and not laying anymore. We put them all in a pen and each had a turn to spend three days in an isolated cage to lay an egg. If no egg was found in three days, the hens were transfered to a different pen: chicken death row. After we had collected about 20 hens in death row, we scheduled a day for the culling.

Part of me cringed at this process. It was not so much the fact that we were butchering the chickens for food, but the fact that we were trying to single out the females that didn't "produce" anymore. It reminded me of Josephine Bonaparte or miscellaneous wives of Henry VIII being done away with for being too old, lack of fertility or other ways in which they were deemed to be useless. We want you, but only for utilitarian purposes.

The morning of the culling had arrived (culling is a nice word for killing) and we were all set for the chickens we had brought down to the processing house. We were also ordered to butcher 2 roosters - they had attacked Matt's little daughter. If you are a rooster, it's not a good idea to attack a farm staff member's child, just for the record. We had a sawhorse set up with two attached buckets with holes in them big enough for the chickens to be put in upside-down so that their neck and head stuck out of the bottom. Once the throat was slit, someone had to stand there and hold the chicken as the body convulsed and the blood drained out. After a couple minutes the head was cut off and the body was submerged into hot water to loosen the feathers. Then, the body was put onto a fancy chicken plucker (we don't have many fancy, mechanical contraptions at the farm - this thing was donated). A wheel with rubber nipple-like things spun around and seemingly magically defeathered the chicken body. Next, the chicken feet were removed and the body was cut open at the bottom so all the guts could be pulled out. Lastly, you pop the chicken into a baggy and put it in the freezer.

We kicked off the culling with Matt's fancy rooster pictured in my previous post. The throat slitting and body convulsing part was fairly unpleasant to watch, so I happily volunteered for gut pulling. Once the chicken is dead and defeathered, it looks similar to what you might find in a grocery store, and that was more comforting than the feathers flying and blood flowing portion of the process. Gutting a chicken is not rocket science, but it did have its challenges. Once the bottom of the chicken was cut into, you had to carefully insert your hand into the body cavity as far back as it would go. You then had to begin pulling a mass of organs gently out of the body - careful not to puncture the intestines or gall bladder. A couple people squished the gall bladder too hard and fluorescent green goo went everywhere. Then the organs had to be sorted out - intestines and gall bladder in the trash, someone wanted the livers and gizzards to cook that night, and Chris wanted just about everything else to put into an esoteric Italian dish. And just so everyone is clear, the gizzard is the chicken stomach. The stomach has to be sliced, kind of like you are slicing a bagel, and turned inside-out. The contents of the stomach have to be emptied into the trash and the lining has to be peeled off. This is how it's done. It is for real.

As I was removing the organs of one of the chickens, Will, the chicken master, came over and exclaimed, "Wow! That looks like one healthy liver!" I love strangely placed enthusiasm. I wasn't sure if all the chickens were as equally healthy as that one. As I opened up the body of another I was shocked to find strange, gelatinous orbs floating around the organs. Was it tumors? Everyone rushed over to examine. Turns out, they were under-developed eggs. That chicken was vindicated only in death...

The time came for me to kill my rooster. I thought it would be good for me to experience the entire process, but I was growing more apprehensive. The rooster was put upside-down into the bucket and I took hold of his head. One quick stroke and he would be dead. I gave it a good go, but the knife was too dull and I hadn't cut deep enough. But I had sliced enough for the blood to start flowing and the body to begin writhing. I didn't want to do it again. I looked to Chris for help - he told me to give it another go myself. I pleaded with Samson, the intern from Ghana, to help and he just stood there with a blank look on his face. Apparently, Chris and Samson thought I should do it myself as some sort of organic farm, meat eater rite of passage or something. All I could think about was this was turning into a slow and painful death for this poor bird and no one would help this crazy girl dancing around, whining and crying, with a dull knife in her hand. So, I gave it two more good cuts and it was over.

I am now officially retired from chicken butchering.

Bird Brain Violence

The summer is flying by and many of the live-in volunteers are moving out to go back to school. To celebrate their time on the farm we had a giant farm dinner party and Chris cooked the last frozen turkey raised on the farm last season. The party was a great celebration with an enormous spread of local food. As the party was winding down Darren, one of the live-in volunteers, decided we needed to organize a game for a little after dinner entertainment. He is a very smart guy (taking a year off before moving onto med school to become a brain surgeon) and suggested we play a game of tape ball where all of the participants knock around a roll of duct tape with brooms, sticks and other blunt objects. Unfortunately, we ended up hitting each other more than we did the duct tape. Against my better judgement, I participated in the game and am now nursing some pretty intense cuts and bruises.

In addition to the friendly game of tape ball, there were a couple other violent situations that arose this week involving the roosters. I have grown pretty confident dealing with the chickens over the past few weeks, but earlier in the week I was attacked by a rooster. I was explaining to my friend Luke, who was visiting us on the farm for a couple days, how to wrangle a chicken. As I was standing there holding the chicken, the rooster came in out of no where and started to charge me. If you are not very familiar with roosters, they have a fairly large, menacing spike on the back of their leg and they can draw a fair amount of blood with their beak. I have heard a few stories about people being attacked by the roosters, and here are a few methods to avoid being injured by a rooster starting with non-violent approaches:

Non-violent approaches:

1. Run away

2. Bring an umbrella to open and close to startle the rooster and get it to go away

3. Move your feet around to distract the rooster, then grab it by it's feet and carry it around upside-down for a while to show it who's boss

4. Put one foot up in the air to hypnotize the rooster

Violent approaches:

1. Drop kick the rooster like it's a football

So, as the rooster approached, I put my foot up into the air hoping it would cause the rooster to fall into a non-violent trace-like state. Unfortunately, it did not work and I had to drop kick the thing.

I didn't really notice the roosters very much until this happened. Several people here on the farm just want to go ahead and butcher the roosters because they are violent and they serve no purpose. We don't want to have any fertilized eggs and all they do is attack people - so why not just eat them? I'll grant them - they are very pretty to look at with all their flashy feathers and what would the farm be without the typical cock-a-doodle-do every morning? But...I am beginning to think dispatching them is a good idea because today I was attacked again, and this time I was double teamed.

I made the mistake of opening the chicken coops up before feeding and watering all the chickens. So, all the chickens and roosters were roaming about as I was going about my chicken chores. As I was getting some feed out of the feed bucket a rooster approached me with a wily look in his eye. I was ready for him and was using the lid of the garbage can we use to store the food as a shield as I lifted my leg to kick if necessary. But to my surprise, another rooster was behind me. Before I could do anything, the rooster had flown into me from behind and cut me on the back of my leg. Fleeing was the only option and I made my way safely over to the water hose and used that to fend of the next couple of attacks.

I think it's about time for some chicken noodle soup.

Goats

Recently the Educational Director, Matt, turned 30. All the volunteers and interns at the farm were invited to his trailer that evening for a dinner celebration. To my surprise, instead of the normal topics one might discuss at an event (politics, spirituality, the arts, etc...), I found myself talking about the goats on the farm.

I have milked the goats three times since I have lived on the farm. All of those times felt like out-of-body experiences. Squeezing the teats and hearing the streams of milk hit the pail I'm thinking to myself, "How did I end up here?" Speaking of teats... Many people reading this might not be aware that the size of the teats varies from goat to goat. Some goats have enormous teats and others are not so well endowed. For the inexperienced milker, the small teats can cause mild anxiety. It is very hard to extract the milk from the small teat for obvious reasons - one can't get a good grip.

I realized the next morning I was scheduled for milking, so I decided the best way to overcome my issues with small teats was to glean some teat wisdom from the other interns and volunteers that were more experienced milkers. Some people claimed that removing the pointer finger from the grip and starting with the middle finger was the way to go. Others said that gripping very high up onto the udder was the solution. The next morning I approached the small teats with new-found wisdom and greater confidence. Although I still experienced some small teat awkwardness (STA), I did a more efficient job than I ever had before.

Taking care of goats is serious business and Jocelyn, the livestock intern, has my full respect. It seems to me that she is the hardest working woman on this farm. Recently, I had the pleasure of working with her on a rather difficult task: trimming the goats' hooves. And I thought milking small teats was hard! If you ever find yourself needing to trim goats' hooves here is a breakdown of how to do it:

1. Place the goat's hind leg in between your legs to hold it in place. (Your rear end faces the goat's rear end so you can bend over to closely examine the hoof.)

2. Scrape all compounded poop/hay/etc. off of the goat's hoof

3. Take clippers and cut through excess, overgrown hoof that is really thick and looks like really old man toenails

4. Take a break when you really get tired of the goat kicking you in the crotch (How do the men do this task? Perhaps there is a crotch kick avoidance technique I don't know about yet...)

Honey Harvest!

Yesterday was honey harvest day at the farm. It was an interesting experience being part of the processing team. We ended up with about 60 jars of honey and probably about that many bee stings spread out over everyone. I avoided being stung, but probably because I wussed out toward the end when the processing house was full of bees. I was not able to be "one" with the bees. But a couple people who were one with the bees ended up being stung in the face. Not enjoyable.

Fair Trade and MMS

Recently I was able to help out by taking some photos of items from our Village Store at the farm. The store is managed by farm intern and our neighbor, Peter from Canada and his wife Kristine. We thought it would be cool to feature some of the items from the Village Store on the website with a picture and background information on the item. The pictures were taken in the farm environment where the Village Store is located. I have posted a few of the pictures above.

The farm wants to offer fair trade items as a way of offering socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable alternatives to customers. Fair trade costs more, but considering individuals are being paid living wages, their children are being educated, their health concerns are being respected and their environment is being managed sustainably, we can consume in ways that bring justice an peace to the world. This is a great topic to explore more and as I learn more and more about this I realize that I do not want to support companies and practices that harm other people.

In addition to being passionate about fair trade and educating people about it, Peter from Canada is also passionate about something called "Miracle Mineral Supplement" or "MMS" for short. MMS comes in a bottle that looks like it was purchased from the 99 cent store and a label that could have been printed on some guy's home computer printer. Peter acknowledges the sketchiness of the packaging, but says that MMS has been known to cure such things as zits, warts and cancer. (Although we tried it on a random giant zit that Chris had last night and, unfortunately, we saw no results). But, Peter is running an experiment right now on some ailing farm plants. Half of the plants are being sprayed with MMS and the other half are not. So far, 4 plants on the MMS side have died and 16 have died on the non-MMS side. Also, we have a young goat who has had a resistant parasite causing diarreah that can be deadly to goats. MMS was administered a few days ago and we have seen noticable improvement and the poop has normalized. So, mixed results for the Miracle Mineral Supplement. As far as I know, there is still no instant cure for the occasional zit.

Chickens

Chris and I had the good fortune to be asked to house sit for the Educational Director, Matt. We were excited to experience the luxury of his trailer, complete with air conditioning and a flushing toilet. Before leaving on his vacation, Matt went through the details of caring for all of his animals which included 2 dogs, 2 ducks, a cat, several chickens and a rooster. When we arrived Sunday evening we noticed that most of the chickens were out of their pen and running around the area. We thought it would be a good idea to work together to round up the chickens and put them back into their pen. Why not? Were competent professional people from New York City - how hard could wrangling a few chickens be? An hour later, hot, frustrated and completely unsuccessful, we gave up. We couldn't even catch one chicken. We failed at the personal challenge we had given ourselves.

The next day, Will (the guy in charge of all the farm chickens), needed a volunteer to help wrangle a bunch of chickens to move to a new pen. I jumped at the chance to redeem myself, and learn from a true chicken master. Here is what I learned about catching chickens:

1. You must get over being startled by the squaking, flapping of wings, etc. (get into a mental chicken zone)

2. You must corner the chicken in a coop, barn, corner etc. Chasing chickens in an open area is usually unsuccessful. They are quite fast runners.

3. Quickly grab the chicken by it's tail or feet and place it against your leg or side to prevent excessive wing flapping.

4. Grab chicken on both sides of it's body, penning the wings down.

5. Put chicken in desired area or take picture of self with chicken.

When we got back to the trailer later that afternoon I was excited to share my new skills with Chris. I noticed the chickens hanging out in the barn area and asked Chris if he wanted to see me catch some chickens. He looked skeptical and said yes. I proceeded to fluidly pluck 5 chickens from the barn and put them back in their pen. After watching, Chris managed to get 1 chicken to add to the pen as well. Later we decided to go for all of them and managed to collect all the chickens into the pen where they belonged. We were excited to accomplish something we had no idea how to do one day prior.

On the Farm

We are in the midst of our fourth week on the farm (if you were getting worried about us, we've survived so far...).

Our first day on the farm was quite a shock. As we drove south into Texas, the temperature kept rising - until it hit 101. Our shack was stiflingly hot and the mosquitoes were brutal even with the heat. We procured a broom and a mosquito net, as well as an extension cord to connect a small light and fan. We were feeling a little better about the accommodations as we drifted off to sleep beneath our mosquito net. Sometime in the middle of that night we awoke to crashing and thrashing back and forth across the floor of our hut. Chris jumped out of the net to figure out what creature had invaded our hut (a snake? or raccoon? or a giant beetle???). It turns out that our cat, Bella, had somehow gotten herself stuck in fly tape and was running around the hut wildly trying to free herself only to make the entire length of adhesive stick to her backside. We pulled the tape off and spent the next two hours of the night combing the glue out of her fur. Good times.

We are still adjusting to life on a farm and living in simulated 3rd world housing. We've been fully welcomed into a thriving community of smart and engaging people who have helped us to plunge into daily tasks on the farm. So far we have milked goats, pulled weeds and worked in the garden planting seeds and harvesting veggies. Chris is also working on restoring a commercial stove for the farm kitchen. In our spare time we adopted an abandoned kitten who is thriving as a farm cat and apparently enjoys sleeping in the executive director's chair in his office upstairs while we are out working on the farm. (That might change when he comes back from vacation).

We hope to update this blog more frequently now that we are a bit more settled. We miss New York and we miss all our pals. Please drop us a line if you get a chance.