It’s Tuesday so that means that it’s a day off. We went to a yoga session at the Vienna Grange taught by one of the out of town guests especially for us! The yoga was like none I had practiced before. It’s philosophy was rooted in starting like a baby on one’s back, moving the legs. Eventually, one moves to their stomach, then arms, then standing. We did a lot of concentrated breathings, chanting, and vishivasana. It was very relaxing, and a good stretch.

Most of the day I spent relaxing and hanging out around the house with the other wwoofers. I also completed the next few weeks worth of homework. After dinner, Ellie, Aizhan and I went for a walk to Vienna.

But this morning was exciting because there was a demonstration I was unwilling to miss. Today was the day that all the meat birds were going to be butchered and processed, and I couldn’t wait to learn more.

***DISCLAIMER***

***DO NOT THE FOLLOWING SECTION IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT BUTCHERING!!!***

The family always processes chickens on Tuesday’s. They make it an explicitly optional activity since some wwoofers don’t want to see that, and we were mostly observing anyway. They don’t want to waste our valuable man-hours letting us stand around and watch the family butcher birds.

We went out to the barn, where all the family members participating in the process were preparing. The  birds were in large blue crates awaiting their fate. T would take them out of the crate, put a double-balled “bobble” hair ties around their feet, and placed each chicken head down into the chicken cone.

This is where things get gruesome. he would go over to them, one by one and cut their jugular veins with a very sharp knife. To keep the knife sharp, he would make sure not to cut through the feathers, but rather cut at a similar angle to the feathers. By cutting their jugular, they were essentially braindead in a matter of moments. He was also careful not to cut the windpipe, because although they were braindead, their breathing reflex continued for almost a minute. This ensured that the bird’s heart would continue beating longer, and draining more blood from the body.

After about one minute, the birds were removed from the chicken cone, and hosed off. They were then dipped into a vat of water (maintained at about 140 degrees) for about one minute. This would loosen the feathers without cooking the skin. If they are left in the water too long, their skin gets flimsy and falls off more easily. They were then tumbled in a homemade defeathering machine (which looked like a top loading washing machine with rubber spikes.) They were tumbled in this machine for about 45 seconds, or until almost all the feathers were off.

Then they moved along to the next station for processing. There, they had their feet and heads removed. This was done by gently cutting the flesh from around the knee to remove the foot. And for the head, the windpipe and all flesh was cut, then the neck snapped backward which would break the neck.

The chicken was then passed along to the next person for the removal of their innards. They did not explain every detail as to how they remove the innards of the chicken, but basically, they remove everything , but keep the heart and liver for themselves and save the gizzards for someone else. Then they are placed in cold water and prepared for packing into the freezer. (I didn’t see what they do to pack it in the freezer either.

At some point, they needed more chickens, so Mr. D, Aizhan, and I went down to catch the rest of the birds. We would catch them by the legs to keep them from hurting themselves (and because it was easy.) Then we brought them up to be butchered on the tractor.