Not for the Faint Hearted

I am all about homeschool field trips that are free. They seem to come around few and far between so when I got the email about watching a homeschool family process their chickens for human consumption, it was right up my alley. We are a chicken family too. Well, not in the same sense. I doubt that their chickens have names like Sweetie and Tiger and sit on their shoulders like ours do, but the conversation has come up on more than one occasion about purchasing other chickens to actually eat and not name and play with. The disappointing part of this field trip was that it fell last week on our moving day. Nonie stepped up to the plate and volunteered to take the 4 older Fish Sticks to the processing day. I hated that I had to miss it, but Nonie took over 100 photos to help me feel as if I were there.

First they loaded up the chickens to transport them to the "special area."


Next they placed them upside down in these funnels that have sharp razors inside that slit their throats as "nicely" as that job will allow. The problem was when one little rascal skittered out of the funnel so that his feet were dangling below and his head was above. I guess some just go down fighting. (Isn't there a country song about that?)

Next they dip them in this cauldron of boiling hot water, set to a perfect temperature. This loosens the hold of the feathers to make the next process as easy as possible without cooking the birds.

Nonie wished she had this machine when she was growing up instead of hand plucking stinky, wet, sticky feathers like she and her brother used to do after Papa and Mimi slung the chickens to break their necks. I guess we've gotten a bit more civilized, eh? This contraption spins the birds around so fast that their feathers just come off and slide out a hole in the bottom side of the barrel...
leaving a few to hand pull.
Then they gutted and cut them....
and bagged them to sell. Easy as pie.
And these tough country kids had no trouble eating their chicken salad sandwich that I packed them for lunch. Just teasing...it was just peanut butter and jelly.

So now you know how the country folks eat chicken.