Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Monday Barn Hop...one day late

Photobucket

We certainly had a busy week.
We had some gorgeous weather, finally making it into the 70's for a couple of days and seeing the sun bright and beautiful. The garden loved this! The grass loves this!
(And I can't keep up with it.)

I spent Friday mowing and weeding the garden. I have grass that grows between the paths and all around where there aren't beds. My goal is to eventually get rid of that by putting mulch paths down but I haven't gotten that far yet.

Saturday was our big homesteading day. We decided to finally get the old flock of chickens into the freezer. This would save money in 2 ways. I can now cut down on my feed bill and I put meat in the freezer! I first went to the farmer's market to get my tomato starts and then came home and set up the assembly line. We told our 4 children that they were all to help and that they would be rewarded! We also had our 10 year old niece here for the weekend and she was ready to help out as well. We got a great assembly line going and the kids were real troopers! I was so proud of all their help. We processed 19 hens in 4 hours. Most of the time the 3 girls did the plucking with a little help every now and again from the 2 boys. I did the eviscerating.
This picture is awesome. My husband took it with his phone. This is towards the ends after at least 2-3 hours of work and they are still smiling. I love this picture too, because of the plucked chicken sitting there waiting for me to eviscerate! Nicholas is also plucking here, but you can only see his little blue-gloved hand. He's behind Charissa.
It felt so good to get so many hens in the freezer. I've been wanting to cut this old flock out for months. I'm very thankful for the meat. Yes, it's stewing meat, but meat nonetheless.

Thanks for stopping by!! Have a great week!

2 comments:

Charissa Ferrenberg said...

I'm in the white....... it was a bad idea though cause a couple chickens did NOT bleed out all the way, MY POOR TANK TOP!!!

Jamie said...

Good for all of you kids,a family that works together stays together.You are awesome,my son has helped us butcher out before but we actually havent done it since we just sell our older birds,hmmmmm,maybe i need to think that through.