Busy, busy
June 27, 2010
Saturday was butcher day for our meat chickens. We joined 3 other families at friend’s house and processed about 250 chickens before 10:00 and the heat of the day. That included the chilling, bagging, equipment cleaning, and offal composting.
Needless to say, I don’t feel like putting too much into meals on busy days like this. I am posting a recipe at Simple-Green-Frugal Co-op today. Greens are abundant at this time in the garden and easy to harvest and process. The recipe is quick too – perfect for those days when you don’t feel like cooking.
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Food Renegade
Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op
WoW! You have really been busy.
I love that recipe, but I don’t have any greens left in the garden.
We have had a good garden this year though still looking to improve for next year.
We grew yellow crookneck and summer scalloped squash, green beans, new potatoes, onions, corn, tomatoes, bell pepper, jalalpenos, and lady cream peas. Still waiting on the last of the corn. It has been incredible good eating this summer considering the lack of rain.
Your post title sums it up nicely. 250 chickens – holy cow! Thatsa lotta work. Must have been quite the production line going on there…
I appreciate the greens recipe, been trying to find alternatives to just steaming them, this one sounds good. Had some Kale last night braised with a smidge of bacon, it was so much better than it would have been just steamed by itself.
Holy Cow! 250 is nothing against my 50! We JUST set the date. July 5th! Off with their heads!!!!
wow. that is a lot of chickens! what did you mean by offal composting?
Our chickens are close to butchering weight, plus we have 7 turkeys to butcher as well and some of our old layers for soup hens. The turkeys are far easier and quicker for whatever reason. I’m thinking mid July, when Mike has some time off.
We too are enjoying greens in salads, as wraps and on sanwiched, now waiting for cukes, peppers and maters
)
Blessings,
Kelle
Wow, seems like just last week they were chicks. I was wondering how old they were and about how much they weighed on average. From the picture I’m guessing they dressed out at about four to six pounds? They look great. I can’t ever seem to kill them that early, I guess I’m greedy and keep holding out for bigger and bigger birds. This year we were talking about killing the biggest ones one weekend and then letting the rest go a couple more weeks, partly just to break up the work, partly because we don’t really have enough room for thirty birds once they are full size. Thanks, Emily
I do not envy you; chicken processing is the one reason I refuse to have them – not due to squeamishness but it just is such a fussy thing to do, and gods how I hate plucking the things.
Cheers for the recipe, I had a few bits of swiss chard that made it so I’m looking for all sorts of ways to use it.
Our friend just processed her first batch of meat chickens yesterday (Sunday), and we are excited to taste what will truly be my first non-factory-farmed fresh chicken! I’ll look forward to reading more about your process. We may want to try meat chickens next year.
Delicious recipe! And the best part is I already lots of the ingredients in my garden
I enlisted my family a couple of months ago to help with the garden and it has been great! My husband did the plowing, I ordered a few products (like a rain water barrel) from http://greeneutopia.com and the kids did most of the work 
It’s also easier to get the younger ones to eat vegetables when they get to see them go from ground to plate. Chickens, on the other hand, would be a different story!
Wow! You guys were really cooking! Or…killing…or something. I have to say, when I read “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” and saw that it took approximately six adults six hours to kill a dozen chickens and turkeys, I had to giggle a bit…even plucking by hand as a total newbie, it didn’t take more than 15-20 minutes to do a bird. You all were going far faster than that!
ahhhh that’s a lot of chickens.
thanks for the recipes on S, G, F. We eat chard a lot. This will be a nice way to have some variation to it.
Emily in So. TX
That WOULD be a lot of work…the mother-in-law and I used to do about 20 a day until they were done and it was ALWAYS at haying time when I should have been sitting on a swather…..I always hated that job!
The vegies look delicious.