We Process Freedom Rangers and Love It

When I woke at 6, I thought, "Oh, shoot! We were supposed to get up at 5 to process chickens before the flies came out en masse."

I woke Phil, and although he wasn't excited about the prospect of both gathering all the needed gear and then starting, he did the chores while I attempted to assemble equipment.

When we processed chickens last fall, neither the scalder or plucker worked. Phil basically plucked by hand after an imperfect scalding experience, since the plucker broke wings and legs and otherwise destroyed the Cornish Crosses. So we were not expecting much.

Today, though, the scalder lit, first try. We figure it must have been just breezy enough last year to blow out the flame. Every time. Maybe it was just our prayers, since the outdoor stove is absolutely not working, so we couldn't have rigged up the same metal tub scalder. And the RV stove would have been too small and crowded. The Lord provides.

So Phil killed the first two birds, and we put them in the plucker and watched in amazement as the feathers flew off perfectly, leaving pale yellow skin and no feathers, no breakage.

I am the skilled eviscerator. This has always been a fairly nasty job, with stinky inner organs to contend with, fear of gall bladder breakage, and many pounds of unusable parts for the pigs or the compost pile.

So, with our new birds this year, the Freedom Rangers, I was thrilled to find that there was no objectionable odor at all. Even when "femat [fecal material] happens," there was no awful smell.

I had used the very clear instructions by Herrick Kimball to process chickens the first three times. This time, I had read an article by Harvey Ussery on how to process chickens while retaining their nutrient-dense parts. So besides the standard necks and feet for stock, I made stock today with chicken heads (the beaks just pop off after scalding!), and saved the gizzards, heart, and liver for some future experiments.

The actual killing and processing of the birds was done by noon. It took two more hours to do another cleaning, and then to weigh and stuff the large birds into bags. The largest bird was 5 pounds, 9 ounces, and that is a BIG bird for a gallon ziploc. We need to look into other options.

Then I dealt with peeling the feet, and didn't really get done with chicken processing until after 5. And that was only 23 birds! I'm not sure what we'll do when we have 125 a month to deal with.

Flavor, though, was excellent. Tender, succulent. The white meat was unlike anything I've had before. It wasn't at all pink, but it wasn't at all dry or stringy. A very new experience.

In other news, I went to feed the bees more sugar water, and as I took the feeder out, a bee flew up and stung my finger. No warning, no provocation. Only minutes before, a bumble bee had lightly stung Joe's shoulder, so perhaps there was something odd in the atmosphere right then that made the bees more aggressive. (My right ring finger, in case you can't tell from the photo. At this point, I can't even straighten it entirely, and the rest of my hand is swelling up.)

Isaiah wanted me to take a picture of his new tent. "You can post it on your blog," he informed me.

And Joe made a sandwich for breakfast. Other children make mud pies. He makes mud sandwiches. I expect they taste about the same.