Saturday, June 26, 2010

chicken slayer



Today I killed my first chicken. I've participated in the destruction of hundreds in my life, but never had to actually do the deed. It was, as Liam put it, a little dramatic. It felt strange to hold this warm being and know I was going to end its life. The first one didn't go that well. The second one was messy. Then it pretty much evened out. I was still too squeamish about it myself to do the head-cutting in front of the kids, so I waited until they had wandered off before snatching one of the big chickens and beheading it. I didn't want them to see the expression on my face, which I'm sure was a mixture of determination and anguish.

The rest of the process, the dipping in hot water, plucking, gutting - that was no big deal. And I suppose it gets easier, right? And they were nice, fat chickens, and looked mighty fine all vacuum-sealed in my freezer. Yeehaw. Not an easy process, though.

What was really interesting, though, was the response from the kids. Liam was really interested by the whole thing - he especially liked looking at the heart and the lungs and stuff like that. His friends Sam and Blaze were over today and they were pretty intrigued by it all, too. Théa was pretty interested in the fact that we would eat it. But there was never any real concern for the chickens as beings - it was just matter of fact - they were meat birds, and they were meant to be eaten. Funny. They get it and I didn't really even tell them. I dare say these kids are becoming farm kids at an alarming rate.

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