Their folks owned a dairy farm.
The old fashioned, metal cans filled with milk they cooled in the stream that ran through their milk house kind of dairy farm.
The kind where the farm wife, Mrs Schlick strutted out to the chicken house early Sunday morning, in her black rubber galoshes and plucked a plump bird from the roost and off-with-its-head before 7 am kind of farm.
She had that bird gutted, plucked and in the oven before we left for mass. Ready for her to make up some mashed potatoes and gravy and three bean salad in her red gingham apron when she got home for a 2 pm Sunday dinner.
I thought of them all today when we got the call from our friends Emma and Kioshi, that the chickens we'd ordered with them had arrived.
Meet the Freedom Rangers (with a name like that they should be wearing little crime-fighting capes)
Adorable now, they are here for just one purpose, future Sunday dinners. All 25 of them will have a very decent upbringing up until D-day. They will be warm and cozy in a brooder box for the first couple weeks and then out they go.
Onto green grass where fat worms and fuzzy bugs will supplement their diet of organic grain fresh water and raw milk. They will grow big and healthy and yummy. In 12 weeks it will be Off-with-their-heads time.
We will do it assembly line style. Deaths will be quick and humane. Birds will be gutted and cleaned outside on a large stainless steel counter with running hose water. They will be dropped in hot water to loosen feathers and be plucked clean then immediately frozen and put in our freezers.
Sunday dinner will be promptly at 2 PM.
Our gardener was always given the job of actually saying farewell to the hens, after that my mother did the rest. As children, he made us kids deal with the bantams... he thought it was appropriate!
ReplyDeletei wish i could buy fresh chickens like this!
ReplyDeleteWe've got 25 growing as I type. I think they're 3 weeks at this point. We eat them year round, but not at 2:00.
ReplyDeleteThe price of chicken food went up so much that we have cut back to about 10 laying hens. I wish we would quit burning corn in cars, it is a bad deal for everyone, even chickens.
ReplyDeleteHaha this post cracked me up. I remember my mom's Aunt Bernice who we'd visit in Nebraska and me being a town girl thought those chickens she took such care of were her pets. Ha!
ReplyDeleteHi Donna,
ReplyDeleteLet me know when it's off with their heads time. I would like to come down and help and learn.
We've never gotten a meat only breed, we've always gotten dual purpose, The dual purpose can be tasty, but they never seem to dress out with those nice plump breasts. That first photo has made me hungry!
ReplyDelete