So, like I mentioned in the last week, I knew I’d be missing the Columbus area farmers markets yesterday morning because I would be busy “Meeting My Meat”. Even though I had second and even third thoughts about going, I gathered up enough courage and went.
I kind of felt I had to. As much as I go on about eating local and being connected to your food, I felt that in good conscience, the only way I could go on eating chicken/meat is by either slaughtering my own, or watching someone else do it.
So, click on through, if you’d like to read about my day and my feelings about what happened. Warning: descriptions will be graphic – I only took one picture of the chicken, and at the point where I took the picture it mainly already looks like food. I decided against taking pics of the more graphic parts. There are some cute pictures of kittens and ducks, though. 
So we were up super bright and early (6am), and after picking up my mother, were on our way to 2 Silos in Mt. Gilead by 7am. When we got there around 8:15am, Denise and her helpers were already setting everything up, and we got settled in with some yummy Amish doughnuts.
Her cat just had kittens, which are available for adoption. Aren’t they adorable? Paul tried to spend all morning talking me into the orange one here:
And then we were introduced to their equally adorable duck named Geoduck, who all the kids around took a shine to and spent all morning chasing around his temporary home in Denise’s garden.
Soon thereafter, the other families arrived, each seeming to be as equally nervous and apprehensive about the experience as I was. We all just didn’t know what to expect. Once everyone arrived and had their fill of doughnuts and coffee, she started the workshop, by demonostrating the process of selecting our chickens, taking it over to the tree where the animal was to be slaughtered, doing the actual deed, plucking the feathers, eviscerating it, and then putting it in ice cold water to cool down the bird quickly. I’ve honestly got to say, witnessing it for the first time really affected me. A lot. I felt like I wanted to cry. I didn’t know at that point whether or not I’d be able to go through with it when my turn came.
After that we got to go out to the pen of set aside chickens, and pick our own. That was a tough decision too. It kind of feels like playing God. How do you decide who dies and who gets to live on until selected by someone else or not chosen at all and spared? It really all came down to what chicken I could catch. Lets just say that a lot of these chickens were really motivated, and ran from my fat ass when they saw me coming. I finally managed to catch one – he flapped around a bit at the beginning, but as I held him securely close to me, he calmed down a lot.
The walk over to the tree was one of the longest of my life. Here I am holding this chicken close to me, feeling its warmth against my hands and my chest, knowing that I’d be killing it in a few minutes. Every time I caught its gaze I had to look away because I felt guilty. Intellectually, I know that a chicken’s purpose in life is to provide food to us (both through eggs and through the sacrifice of their own life), but emotionally it’s hard to make that connection between a living chicken shivering a bit in your arms and the finished dish on the table. After about 10 minutes or so I really started to bond with the chicken, and knew that if I didn’t get the slaughter overwith quickly, I wouldn’t be able to go through with it.
Denise said there were three ways to dispatch the chicken – the first was via an ax on a stump (after seeing this done, I knew this wasn’t the method for me), the other was to break its neck with your bare hands (also not for me), the third was to hang it by its feet on a tree and then cutting off it’s neck. That was the method I chose.
My formerly calm chicken struggled a bit as I turned it upside down to tie its feet and at that point I felt the most humane thing I could do was to move forward as quickly as I could to keep its suffering to a minimum. There’s no delicate way to kill a chicken, honestly. It took everything I had to steel my emotions enough to be able to go through with it. I took a deep breath, thanked the chicken for its sacrifice to become my food and wished it a quick and safe passage, pulled its head downwards, and pulled the knife through its neck. I met much more resistance than I thought, and had to saw back and forth a bit and pull even harder. Even though this took literally seconds it felt like time slowed down and it took much longer than it really did. As the neurons started firing once I went through the spinal cord, the chickens wings started flapping about and the chicken thrashed a bit. Since I didn’t get out of the way quickly enough, I got splattered with chicken blood all over me – face, shirt, arms, legs. It kept on moving for about 2-3 minutes, until finally it wasn’t moving any more.
OK. I killed something. I didn’t think I was capable of doing such a thing. You’re talking to the same person who has trouble eating whole crabs because they have eyes that look at you when you eat them. It was at this point that I realized that unless I stopped thinking of it as the chicken I just killed and from this point forward I started thinking of it as food, I’d have trouble with the remaining steps.
The first thing you do after killing it is to pluck it. You start the plucking process by dipping the whole bird (holding it by the feet) into a pot of water that’s at about 140 degrees. The big feathers come out pretty easily, the ones that give you trouble are the tiny pin feathers that are left after pulling all the big ones. Here’s a picture of Paul’s bird during the end of the plucking process. By this time, it’s already starting to look like food.
The plucking part is really tedious – it takes a long, long time. Some people just bypassed the whole plucking part by skinning their birds.
After plucking, we had to eviscerate the birds. This part was pretty tough for me, because my big meathooks that I call hands had a hard time fitting in the cavity of the chicken. We soldiered through, and with the help of one of her helpers, we managed to get all the nasty bits out. All I’ve got to say about that process is that it’s pretty disgusting (the bird is all warm and squishy inside), and that after seeing what’s in a gizzard, I’m never eating one again.
After eviscerating the bird, I marked it with colored rings around its feet and put it in the ice cold tank to cool down. I sat down, making peace with what I had done and knowing that I don’t ever want to do it again. Was it educational? Oh, definitely. Do I feel connected to my food? More than you know – if I hadn’t marked my and Paul’s birds identically, I probably would have a bit of trouble eating it considering I was the one who dispatched it. I’ll never look at poultry in the same way again.
Did I see things that disturb me, like the free range chickens pecking at the decapitated chicken heads? Yup. Will I still be able to eat poultry, after my experience? Definitely, but with a much greater appreciation of the process from farm to table. As for me, I’ve slaughtered my first and last chicken. It was enough for me to find out that farming isn’t the thing for me, no matter how much I like to romanticize it in my mind. My muscles are sore and screaming a day later.
My husband and mother also helped slaughter and butcher a lamb at the same time. I don’t know if I could have done that process at all. Maybe I can convince Paul to talk about it in an entry of his own. We now have a top quarter of lamb in our cooler that we have to break down into cuts later. Any of you know how to cut lamb that are willing to give us a few pointers? We’re absolutely clueless.
I have a lot of respect for what they do over at 2Silos. It takes a lot of strength (both physical and mental) to be able to do all of that day in and day out. And I give a lot of thanks to Denise for offering the workshop and being able to learn firsthand. It’s taught me a lot about both myself and the world around me. If you’re at all interested in this type of thing, she’s planning on doing these workshops again in the future. It’s definitely worth going to.