Butchering the Roosters

If reading about raising and using animals for meat bothers you don’t read any further. I’m not planning to be too graphic or anything, but I don’t want anyone to get upset.

This spring we bought a handful of little Silver Laced Wyandotte chickens. This is a dual purpose breed meaning that the birds are useful as both egg producers and as meat producers.  We went with a dual purpose breed as we couldn’t be sure at one day old if we were getting males or females and we figured that those who wouldn’t be earning their keep with eggs would at least be able to provide us with a nice dinner. Out of the 5 chicks we got, 3 were roosters. Greatttt.

We have known since the beginning that any roosters would be headed for the freezer as our neighbors are absolutely 100% not down with cocka-doodle-doos in the morning. We had angry neighbors pounding on the door back in July over our handsome French Copper Maran rooster, Cogburn, demanding we get rid of him by the end of the week. I’m sure they are probably ready to lynch us with the whole 3 part harmony we have going on in the mornings these days.

The roosters would have been fine to butcher a whole month ago, but we have been so busy with getting married, our honeymoon, and winter prep that it just keeps getting pushed back. Matt and I decided that it needed to become a priority for the weekend. The worst part is getting everything set up and cleaning it all up when we’re done.

Some people will cut the head off completely on a block but we choose to use the “killing cone” method. We made our own cones from old plastic jugs, but there are special stainless steel ones you can buy as well. We prefer the cones because the chicken is put to sleep being upside down and is restrained by the walls of the cone. This eliminates the flapping and running around headless. It is easier to watch and much cleaner as well.

We have a friend with a homemade chicken plucker that we borrowed for the 10 Cornish x birds, but we decided to pluck these three by hand. It wasn’t too bad and went very quickly.

Usually Matt does the killing and most of the plucking and I am in charge of eviscerating. It is hard to do the first time, but gets easier the more times you do it. The first chicken we ever butchered took almost an hour before it went in the cooler, but I can clean one now in well under 10 minutes. Learning where all the inards are and how they are attached makes a huge difference.

We choose to let the birds chill/rest for 24 hours before freezing them. This allows them to be more tender than they would be otherwise. I then wrap them and vacuum seal them with my food saver to help them to keep as long as possible. With a total of 13 birds in the freezer we try to eat about 1 per month to ration them out.

The wyandottes weighed out at an average of 2 lbs and 10 oz (dressed) at about 18 weeks. The cornish x birds were at least double that at only 8 or so weeks. Needless to say, it is much more efficent to raise meat breed birds for meat. (Go figure)

Raccoon Drama

You know what a homesteader’s number one enemy is?

Predators.

If you have livestock and haven’t dealt with them yet, you will. And when you do, you will hate them.

My depiction of the raccoon in our chicken run

We have been dealing with raccoons bothering our chickens a lot this fall. The chickens’ coop/run is right outside of our bedroom window and we have a motion light very near to it. The first time we scared the rascal off from the window and after that the light coming on seemed to be doing the trick.

About a month ago the light came on as we were getting ready to go to bed. We just assumed the girls had set it off as they flew up to roost on their coop roof for the night. Then there was a squawk.

I ran to the window, but I didn’t see a raccoon. I saw two! And they were INSIDE the chicken run fence! We knew we needed to act fast and didn’t have a lot of time to contemplate how they actually got in there. I told Matt to get the .22.

Like a hillbilly, Matt shot one of the coons from our bedroom window but it flew up the side of the run and out through the chicken wire over the top. Now we know how they got in there…

But wait. Coon A ran off. What happened to Coon B? He disappeared! Or…

No, that couldn’t be. He can’t be in the COOP. No.

Oh yes.

He’s definitely in the coop.

So out we went. The end of that story is that there was one less coon in town.* We hoped the other one learned his lesson.

Well, last night the light came on. I didn’t hear anything but it woke me up so on a whim I checked to be sure.

“Matt.”

(Still half asleep) “What.”

“Coon. Shoot it.”*

And so we now have saved the chickens twice. We have been so lucky that we’ve been fast enough to see them before they start ripping and tearing. This is also very good motivation to finish our new, much more raccoon-proof coop.

Those of you who don’t know about raccoons and chickens, let me fill you in:

Raccoons eat chickens. They rip and tear into them and often kill them all at once and eat only part of each. They won’t just grab one and take it home for Mrs. Coon to put in the stew pot. They are vicious and ruthless and if you don’t get rid of them, they will keep coming back until you do. They are incredibly smart and strong. They can rip through chicken wire and know how to open doors. Are they cute? Absolutely. Do I want one poking around my chicken coop? No. And we are not about to start moving them all over the state. It’s not worth it.*

I’m hoping this will be the last we see of the raccoons for a while. We shall see.

* In the state of Maine, under Title 12 Section 12401 it is stated that

“a person may lawfully kill, or cause to be killed, any wild animal or wild turkey, night or day, found in the act of attacking, worrying or wounding that person's domestic animals or domestic birds or destroying that person's property. A person who kills a wild animal or wild turkey by authority of this section shall report the incident to the Maine Warden Service as provided in section 12402, subsections 3 and 4.”

Making Cider 2015

Much like everything else this year, cider pressing kept getting pushed back until it’s almost too late. We bought a lightly used, homemade cider press earlier this year for a mere 300 dollars and immediately couldn’t wait for apple season. Once the apples finally started to ripen we were swamped with wedding stuff and then once the wedding was over we had so much other stuff to catch up on it just kept getting forgotten. Seriously though, who could possibly own a cider press and miss out on making that sweet brown nectar?

Making apple cider is no new adventure for me. My family made gallons and gallons every year up until recently with my uncle’s antique press. He had an electric motor to chew up the apples and a big threaded pipe to press the juice out of the fruit. The whole family would bring bins and bins of apples and apple dishes and everyone would help out to make the golden goodness. We called the annual event the “Apple Squeezin” and every year whoever put in the most work would be crowned as the “Apple King or Apple Queen.” It was a great time and everybody always went home full of apples and happiness (those are arguably the same thing, no?)

Our cider press

We don’t get too fussy about our cider; we never did at my uncle’s either. If you try to buy all your apples like you would eating-apples you would go broke. In my family we would go to a PYO orchard and make a deal with them to take totes of drops for a very cheap price. Bruised apples don’t affect cider as they get all chewed up anyway. We would try to leave the wormy ones out, but let’s be honest; a little extra protein never hurt anyone. This year we got our apples from a friend with some trees that couldn’t use all the fruit she had.

That's a lot of apples

We also don’t pasteurize our cider. Some people wouldn’t touch it, but I’ve been drinking it since I was two and I’m still here. We (I was) were planning to try and brew some hard cider, to put a bunch in the freezer, and to leave some out for drinking and mulling. We (I) made all these plans of course before we broke our little press and ended up with only a half gallon. Matt apparently knew this wouldn’t work out. He’s an unbeliever.

Well, we had great plans to recreate the Apple Squeezin’ with a few friends and family this year but it never materialized so we decided that we better get some apples and try our new magic maker out before all the apples turn into applesauce.

Our press is very simple in comparison to my uncle’s beast. Ours has a hand cranked scrater (that’s what I call the thing that chews up the apples; SKRATE-ter) made up of some stainless steel screws on a round pole that turns. This seemed like it should work well enough and I was so excited to start pulverizing the apples. Welllll, it didn’t work so hot. It just kind of twirled the apples around and never really chewed them up. This was disappointing.

To make things worse, I never ordered those nifty cider bags you’d need to use with our press because the slats on the pressing bucket are so far apart. I bought these turkey stuffing bags on sale at Wal-Mart thinking they would work…hah. No.

Don't skimp on cider bags. Just. Don't. Do. It.

At full capacity they were about the size of a tube sock and it took a lot of doing to fill them to begin with.

So we decided we needed to get creative. We had a billion apples after all. So we started to cut the apples in half and put them directly into the pressing bucket and squish them that way. That sort of worked for a little while but it wasn’t great.

This is about as productive as it got

At this point we started to hear some cracking and popping sounds and Matt (who was running the bottle jack) said, “That doesn’t sound good”

To which I said, “It’s just apples Matt. Don’t be so stupid.”

“I think that might be more than apples.”

“No. Keep going. Why are you stopping? It’s the apples. Keep GOOOOO-ingggg”

About here is when our pressing basket blew open with a startling “POP” that even jumped the dog and Matt gave me that “why can’t you ever listen to me look.”

Not much, but sooooo good

So with our bin of apples still more than full and a mere half gallon of cider we threw in the towel and cleaned up our mess. With great disappointment we dumped our mangled apples in the compost and went back inside to plan how to re-engineer the entire unit. We may not be able to make much cider this year, but next year it will be in the fridge, in the freezer, in a warm mug with spices, and in a large glass vessel getting more potent by the day.

Cheers!

The Missing Piece of Pyrex (Or The Highlight of My Honeymoon)

I'm a little late to write about this, but I'm still excited about it anyway. When Matt and I moved into our first apartment year ago, I needed a set of mixing bowls. My mom had two Pyrex sets that she had received as wedding gifts back in the early 80s. Both sets were incomplete but still wonderful. She gave me one of them that was called the "Butterfly Gold II" pattern.

The middle bowl from the set wasn't missing, but she wanted to keep it as it was the bowl she used the most (especially for pie dough). I didn't care as I just needed some bowls to mix stuff in so I was happy to have just the small and large bowls. They were like new in comparison to the bowl she kept that had been used and washed so many times it barely matched anyway. In case you didn't know, years of pastry cutter action can really wear down even the best bowls.

Well, the older I got the more I started to appreciate Pyrex and really wanted to have a complete set. I didn't want the worn out bowl and knew she wouldn't give it up anyway so I started to look on eBay and craigslist. Hah! What I learned was that the "Butterfly Gold" pattern was one of the most common! I thought "Oh good, this will be easy!"

Wrong.

The bowls I had were from the "Butterfly Gold II" pattern that was only made for a very short period of time. Maybe this wound be harder than I thought... It was. There were a few on ebay, but I couldn't see spending 30 bucks on a mixing bowl. Soon I found myself stopping at every goodwill and junk shop for the ellusive bowl.

Flash forward to a few years later and I'm in Peterborough NH. Matt and I are bored and ask a store clerk if there are any antique shops around. "Nope." she says. So we leave and on our way out she calls, "Oh! Wait! There's a white building down blah blah blaah not helpful directions." So we tried to find the place and couldn't. After we gave up and tried to get home, there it was! We went inside and there was all sorts of over priced home decor. We went into one of the rooms, and BOOM, there were the bowls. The whole set. Like new.

I went over and picked them up. The tag said: "$36 - set" on the smallest bowl. Darn it! So close! I knew they'd never split up a set in that condition. We kept browsing and I found some neat old hankies that I wanted. As we were checking out I decided to try my luck and ask if they would consider separating the set. The lady at the counter thought for a moment and said the bowls had just come in last week. Then she said, "$10?" Sold. I didn't even try to haggle.

I have never been so excited about buying a dish before. I had been looking for years and it finally paid off! Seeing the full set all in similar condition was so awesome! I can't wait to find my next target! A medium sized red bowl from my grandmother's 1950s set! Let the search begin!

Here's to Pyrex and the adventures we have while finding it!