First Chicken Slaughtering Experience

This weekend we slaughtered and processed our first chicken ourselves.  All the other chickens we raised and slaughtered were done by a professional processor;  so this was a first for us. Rather than give some sort of step-by-step guide to doing this (there are tons of websites and videos that do this well) we thought we'd just provide a few thoughts on the process of bringing a chicken to the table.

We should say off the bat that we are not in any way morally opposed to eating animals.  We believe that animals are indeed below human beings in value and that human needs can and should be above animal needs.  Furthermore, we believe that animals were created to serve humanity;  this is particularly the case for domestic animals that are entirely dependent on humans for their survival (as chickens certainly are). Although humans can survive without meat, meat provides unique nutritional components that cannot be reproduced from vegetable sources.  This is a need of humans that is superior to an animal's need and life.

This being said, though, we also very strongly believe that humans were created to steward and tend both animal and plant life. That is what husbandmen and farmers do.  We therefore have a responsibility to care for animals and when the time comes to slaughter them, do so humanely and with due respect for the life they give, which transfers energy and sustenance to us.  No animal life should be taken cavalierly, easily or without pause.

These truths came to the fore when I slaughtered our little bantam rooster.  Though I had killed fish before, this was the first animal I had raised and gotten to "know" that then fell under my knife. Not to be morbid, but I very intentionally looked at the rooster's face, into his weird chicken eyes, and deliberately considered that I would close his little eyes for good.  If I could only have killed him because I looked away, or did not fully understand my actions, I would not have been appreciating his life correctly and it would have been a cowardly deed on my part.

The Old Testament frequently talks about the power of blood.  That it contains the animal's life and that atonement is not possible without the spilling of blood.  Often, indeed, the Old Testament sacrificial system seems needlessly bloody and primitive to us.  Why does God need dead goats and bulls, after all?  He doesn't, of course, but Israel did. I think as modern industrialized consumers of food, we miss the importance of blood and sacrifice in two ways.  First, blood is an animal's life.  God was deliberately showing the Israelites that their sin meant death.  When a human slaughters an animal for food, or when a Levitical priest offered a sacrifice,  he releases whatever makes the animal a living thing and turns it into a carcass.  Blood is valuable because it represents a life being lost.  In Old Testament terms, the life of the sacrifice pays for a renewal of the human's life through atonement from deadly sin.

Secondly, I think we moderns have a very hard time realizing what sacrifice means.  Meat means very little to us.  It's what comes in plastic at the store or between buns at a restaurant.  But for a farmer, for an ancient Israelite, that lamb had been cared for, fed at his expense, and would have provided sustenance for the man's family.  By making it a sacrifice to God, he is sacrificing his relationship with the animal, the animal's life, and also willingly giving up the cost of raising the animal and the useful value of the animal to God, thereby acknowledging that God is the source of both life and sustenance.

I valued our little rooster.  I was moved when I slaughtered it.  The sight of living blood brings the reality of meat into focus.  Will I stop eating meat?  No; I will value it more.  From now on every time I have a chicken sandwich, I will remember even more strongly that a death happened for that bit of meat.  It's not morbid to see life in your food. It's valuing justly what is provided for your health and life... whether or not you are grateful for it is up to you.

Spring Work Schedule

As we mentioned earlier, the weather has turned warm pretty early here in Idaho.  In fact we have had a string of fantastically sunny and warm days that are perfect for outdoor work.  And get to work we have.

Since one of the major goals of this season is to be more organized and proactive about the preparation and up-keep items of the homestead, we put together a list of jobs to get done in early, mid and late spring. Keeping on track, making sure elements of the homestead are squared way before the busy times of planting and tending start is a big deal that pays dividends throughout the season.

For example here is our early spring list, which is what we're working on now:

Early Spring (Now-April)

• rake
• churn up beds and compost
• catch early weeds in bed, around beds
• remove/cut down dead weed stalks
• prune hedge away from beds & electric wires
• prune berries
• get chickens in back field to start on insects & goathead
• eliminate grass in unwanted areas
• fix irrigation trench in front to prevent flooding
• Order seeds

 

A lot of these are aesthetic but we found last year that the cleanliness of the property, even if it does not necessary impact growing, makes a huge difference in how eager you are to work on homesteading chores.  Keeping an ordered homestead makes you feel better and keeps bugs and weeds down as well.

 

Even though it has been warm, in our area you have to be ready this early in the season for at least another week of cold weather, probably even in the 20s at night sometime before May.  So a lot of our real growing preparations are going to wait until April.  That is when we'll dig a new double-dug bed and start working on our field crop (which will be mostly clover). 

Only later in May will we start seeds inside and plant some cool weather plants outside.  But we'll get to that when it is time.  For now, it's still grunt work time. 

The raspberries after some intensive family labor pruning and getting rid of deadwood

Our sizable burn piles after pruning the hedge near the beds

Fruit tree leaves ready to be moved.  This area was used as a dog b-room too, so yay.

Coming Back to Life

And the blog is too!  Yes, it's been a few months since our last post since through the winter not too much was going on. It was not a bad winter over all.  We had a pretty cold December, the average temp for the month was about 22 and our coldest night was -11.  The last few weeks of January and the first half of February were quite snowy for our part of Idaho.  We probably got about 20 inches of snow in total. The last weeks in February and the beginning parts of March have been abnormally warm, with temps around 60 more than a few times and the nights not even getting below freezing. The best part of this warm spell was the rain, with Pacific storms sweeping all the way to us. As we have written in the past, southern Idaho has been in a severe drought for a few years, which impacted our season last year. The storms we have gotten have helped tremendously, both in terms of rain here and snow in the mountains.  Even though we are still in a moderate to severe drought in the valley, our water prospects look good from snow melt. The reservoirs are likely going to be near capacity for most of the water year and our well has been well charged by run-off coming underground from the surrounding highlands.

But all this warm weather means that spring work must begin.  Pruning, raking, preparing beds, weeding (already) and eventually planting are on the docket soon.  Our experience last year certainly showed that this grunt work is very important and can really set the stage for the whole growing season.  So, let's get to work!

Some of our producing but out-of-control raspberries that will be pruned soon.

Turning the beds over.  After winter the soil is still wonderfully loose. The strawberries and even some garlic (plus weeds) came back on their own.

We processed more chickens over the winter:  these are the high-producing remainder

A very luxurious chicken area

The reservoir 2 miles down the road is already full