What’s in the ground:

Due to the length of this weeks story, there is no gardening tip.

What’s going on in the homestead:

The following post will contain a depiction that may anger or sicken our vegetarian friends, so reader discretion is advised. Elissa and I have now taken that next step of homesteading, and for the first time we have killed our own meat. As you may remember from past blog posts, Elissa and I became the proud owners of six chickens this past Spring, at least we thought we had six chickens. But as the little chicks began to grow up, and we noticed one getting taller and taller, and more aggressive, I had my worries. It wasn’t until we heard the first crow that we realized we had a rooster in our midst, and that action needed to be taken.

Now, this action was not taken out of bloodlust or spite, there was actually a very pragmatic reason for killing our rooster. As the hens and the rooster matured, and as nature ran its course, the rooster began mounting the hens and attempting to fertilize them. This is problematic for two reasons. When the rooster does this, it stresses the hens out and throws there cycle off, inhibiting their egg production. It also makes the fertilized egg spend more time in the chicken’s body and when they are hatched, the chicken becomes much more “broody” over them, meaning that they protect the eggs, which are still edible even though they are fertilized. Plus, five hens and a rooster was just too much for our space, so it was time for Bob’s Your Uncle (which was his name) to go.

We started by doing insane amounts of research. We consulted a great book I suggest to any aspiring homesteader, The Encyclopedia to Country Living. And we watched a few you tube videos, some very informative, some horrifying, some hilarious. And from this research, we came up with this method.

First, we built a killing cone. Now this sounds like a horrible contraption, but it’s actually the most humane thing we found. I didn’t want to chop the rooster’s head off on a block because I didn’t know if I could muster the strength under such circumstances. I also didn’t want to wring it’s neck for the same reasons. So we took a cue from Joel Salatin’s operation at Poly Face farm, and we made a cone out of an old painting I did when I was 19, and was throwing away because, quite frankly, it was a painting I did when I was 19 (aka terrible). We bent it into a cone and duct taped it to hold it in place, then nailed it to the side of a compost in and put a bucket underneath to catch the blood. Elissa then went into the coop, where we cleared out all the other hens, leaving only Bob, and caught him. She instantly brought him close to her body to calm him down, which worked. We then put him in the cone, pulling his head through the bottom and made sure his body was tightly packed into the cone. This is an important step because as we saw on you tube, it is true that a chicken runs around with its head cut off. By keeping the body enclosed, you avoid that messy situation and keep the chicken calm. Once Bob’s head was through, I grabbed the head, and said a very solemn prayer. The whole day we were keeping it pretty light. But at that moment, things were getting very serious. As I later saw in the video that was shot by Hoot’s own Rob Berliner, I started to hyperventilate as I took the knife to its jugular and slit on a downward angle. I slit down because I wanted to avoid cutting the windpipe. It took me a second to get through the skin (in the future I would have pulled the head back even more to make it tight) but when I did, the blood poured into the bucket, Bob struggled a bit, but after about 30 seconds, he was completely still.

After taking a few moments to breathe, we enacted our factory style system for cleaning and cooking. First, after cutting Bob’s head clean off, we threw the body in scalding water. it’s important to make sure it’s not boiling otherwise you can risk cooking the skin prematurely and making it hard to cut. After a minute of a scald, we pulled him out, dipped him in cold water and then began plucking. This was the easiest part of the process. The feathers almost fell out. Once defeathered, the body looked like it would at a butcher or farmer’s market and it made the process much easier and less emotional. I then chopped off the feet at the knee joint, and slit down the sides of each leg to the anus. Once the cavity was opened, I began pulling out the innards. This process is pretty easy, but you have to be very careful not to break the gallbladder, which is a very large green pouch. It’s actually the first thing you grab. If you break this, it can release bile that makes the meat almost inedible. Once cleaned out, we rinsed him in cold water again. I then carved off the thighs, the wings and sliced off the breast, we threw if in tin foil with a marinade and slow cooked it on the grill.

When I first started this process I thought it was going to be like the bees, a lot of research and process that goes by in a few hectic minutes. But our process was very deliberate, slow and basically flawless. And it only took us about 2 and a half hours from catching Bob to sitting down and eating him. This was the weirdest part of the experience. Talk about knowing your meat, it was surreal to ask to “Pass Bob” when asking for another helping of chicken. As for the meat, the breast was a little tough, but the legs were dark and hearty. It was like turkey. Many in attendance were surprised that you could even eat rooster, but I explained to them that this was the ultimate farm meal. No farmer in his right mind would raise rooster for meat, too many roosters euals too many problems. So sometimes, on the farm, these are the natural progressions of the cycle of life. And I’ll tell you what, the next morning after the kill when I went out to clean the coop, there were two eggs sitting there waiting for me, and the cycle of life continued.

So stay tuned for the next installment as that cycle keeps going. Until then, this is the note from the urban homestead.