Twin Oaks Farm - Day 5

After a brief break on Saturday I make it back to the farm on Sunday morning at 8:00 am, right on schedule. The other helpers are Mary from the Lake Ella farmers market crowd and Paula who helps out now and then and is part of the "invisible work force", out of all of us, including Renee, Paula probably has forgotten more about chickens than we all will ever know. I take my stuff upstairs to my room and then change into my "expendable clothing" which are a pair of black jeans that already have a hole forming near the left pocket in front, a tee shirt and then over that an old, old tee shirt that should have been recycled into a shop rag a year ago ... I new I'd find a better use for it. Also I brought my new rubber boots so I can walk through any mess mother nature throws at me, as long as it's not deeper than 18". Today, mother nature is going to have a field day. The goal is to process approximately 50 broiler chickens. There are two types of chicken here at the farm, hens that lay eggs which are called "layers" and then there's hens and roosters that are called broilers which are raised for the meat. There are about 100 layers which are kept in two large coups, and for some unexplainable reason these chickens gather together 30 in one coup and 70 in the other. The coups are nearly identical, it's baffling in an interesting kind of way, I wonder why they do that. Anyway, then there are about 100 broilers, 50 of which are 11 weeks old and are ready for processing, the other 50 are younger and will be ready on December 13. There are also 26 ducks which are kept in a large coup. All the specialized equipment is set up in the back yard off the rear door to the commercial kitchen in a kinda, sorta assembly line. There are basically four stations set up with an operation specific for each. First the chickens come out of the coup and each into a canister which is held on a rack that will hold 8, but at first we are going to work in batches of 4 until we all get comfortable with our specific tasks. Each canister is a skinny cone made of stainless steel with a bevel on each end, the large end is around 8 inches in diameter and the small end is around 2 inches in diameter, they hang on the rack small side down. Paula grabs the first chicken by the feet and places her headfirst into the canister so her head is sticking out of the small end, then takes three more and places them likewise in the other canisters. Directly below the canisters is a large black plastic bucket about four feet in diameter and separated into three compartments. Renee kills the chickens in what she calls the "kosher method", she takes the hen by the neck in a pinching fashion, holding by the muscles and bone in the neck with one hand and then pulls the throat and main artery away from the muscle and bone with the other hand, then takes a sharp knife and slits the hens throat. Instantly blood starts dripping down the remaining part of the neck and head and then into one of the compartments in the black bucket. Naturally the hen is startled and starts kicking and squawking madly, but the large end of the canister contains all the jerky movement and prevents the meat from getting bruised or damaged. The next station is a two step process, the first is a large 5 gallon pot of water with a little bit of soap over a single portable propane burner which we have to keep at precisely 150 degrees F, Renee takes the hen by the feet and fully dunks her 25 times until the feathers are completely soaked. The hot water and soap solution heats the skin and makes it softer so the feathers are easier to pull out. Then the hen goes into a machine that will "de-feather" the entire bird. This machine looks like a shallow drum and has a matrix of plastic fingers around the wall and on a round platform on the floor of the drum. The drum revolves around the platform and they turn in opposite directions while a sprinkler system keeps everything nice and wet. After all four hens of our trial batch are in the drum Renee turns on the water for the sprinkler and then throws the main power switch ... there is an instant shit storm as all four hens start tumbling and bouncing around like acrobats in a circus and while they are doing that the little plastic fingers are removing all the feathers which the sprinkler system washes down under the round platform to an exit door on the side of the base under the drum, right into one of those square plastic milk boxes, all nice and neat. After less than 30 seconds all four hens are stripped down to the skin except for a half dozen tail feathers and a few on the ends of each wing. I am completely amazed, my eyes are jumping out of their sockets and I keep mumbling for all to hear, "no way", "no way" but the smile on my face is a mile wide. Plucking feathers from a chicken was something I thought you did while watching all 4 episodes of the Star Wars movies back to back, like a pain in the ass extraordinaire, but this machine gets the job done painlessly in 30 seconds, four hens at a time no less. Somewhere on the face of this earth there's an engineer kicking back in the captains chair of a mega yacht, contemplating all the thoughts that led to the design that led to the manufacturing of the "de-feathering drum" that led to the mega yacht. My faith in humanity is restored and all those comments about "the best thing since sliced bread" can now be replaced by the new standard, "the best thing since an automatic defeathering drum". I'm starting to think that this whole chicken processing thing is going to be easy. Well, back to reality. After the drum comes to a stop Renee picks up all four hens by the feet and takes them to Paula who is at the sink on the wood deck near the door to the commercial kitchen. Paula removes any feathers that the machine missed (our engineer is working on a new version) and cuts off the heads and the feet and then rinses away all the feather particles. Enter Tony and Mary who have the role of "eviscerators". On the sidewalk that leads to the rear door of the commercial kitchen there is a stainless steel table set up under a large 10'x10' collapsible awning. Renee takes the first hen and demonstrates to us how to cut the hen open and separate the guts from the cavity of the body, I won't bother you with the details. Of all the organs from the bird we just want the livers, the heart and the gizzard which is another name for the stomach. As we process (what a nice word) the birds these organs go into separate bowls which are each within another larger bowl that is holding ice water. Renee is going to use the livers for a patee over Thanksgiving and I ask her to keep a small amount so I can sample it and she kind of giggles and explains that her guests who are coming up from Miami for the holiday are coming for the patee and fat chance on any being left over. I totally understand and instantly remember that we are going to be processing more chickens on Dec 13th, yeah that's right baby, a second chance on some fresh organic chicken liver patee, french style ... I'll keep you posted. Note to self, get the recipe and preparation directions for Jason. I'm gonna have to break down and buy some kitchen utensils, they have operating instructions don't they? After processing the birds are rinsed a final time and then placed in one of three large buckets of ice water directly inside the door to the commercial kitchen, Renee will pick them up from here, weigh and package each one and then store them in the refrigerator in the garage. Six hours later we are finished and have some hens leftover that Renee didn't feel are large enough to process, they can wait until the next time when they will be larger and will get more $$. After lunch we start to clean up and put each piece of equipment back in the barn and I volunteer to take the remaining broilers back down to the pasture. Renee says yes, good and tells me to do the afternoon feeding first and to pick up the eggs. Back in the feed cage I'm getting everything ready, she has a color coded system that matches the color of the feed bucket with the color of the label on the specific type of feed, there's broiler feed with a blue label and it goes in a oval blue bucket and there's layer feed with a red label that goes in a oval red bucket and the ducks eat layer feed that goes in a green bucket and when the new broiler chicks arrive they get a special mix of young broiler feed that go in two small round red buckets. It's a good system that must be intern proof but it's got my head spinning like a top at the moment, I've been gone for one day and I have to stop and think about what I'm going put where and how much because we just processed some hens so naturally they don't need to be fed anymore and now the young broilers aren't so young anymore and there's the ducks ..... shit, this can get complicated, I have to stop what I'm doing, come to a complete stop and scratch my head to get it all figured out, then I grab a bucket for the eggs and head out. After I get it all into the trailer of the riding lawnmower and I'm on the way down to the pasture I realize that today is Sunday and that Renee was gone all day on Saturday to the farmers market in Panama City and we have been busy all day today, which means the ducks have not been out of their coup for two days .... that's about 24 eggs per day .... plus the chickens as well have been laying eggs for the last two days without any collection ..... shit, I only grabbed one bucket. STOP, Oooops, turn around and go back for another bucket. I finally get down to the pasture and my head is still foggy from the feed bucket feed type equation so I decide to feed the ducks first because that feed is in the green bucket and there is only one of them, so it's impossible to screw it up, I think. I walk over to the duck coup and the ducks are going nuts because they hear me coming, they must be hungry or they want the hell out of that coup, or both. I open the door and I'm shocked, there are eggs everywhere, all over the floor of the coup and some of them are buried about half way in an ocean of duck poop and all their feed containers are bone dry empty, there's not a single blade of grass standing, it's all been matted down under a solid layer about an inch thick of you know what ..... I am so glad I'm not wearing those old tennis shoes anymore. But now I realize the gravity of the situation for the poor ducks, they must be beside themselves after being couped up (no pun intended there) for these two days and frankly, I bet they are just plain pissed about having to live on top of this ocean of fertilizer. I think they are having a really bad day and then a twisted smile comes to my face, they are actually having a great day, it's the broilers that had a bad day. Keeping things in perspective sure can help. There's nothing I can do, I can't let them out until tomorrow morning so I feed them and then go back to the trailer for the egg bucket. The image of 48 eggs buried in duck shit has been burned into the receptor of my eyeballs and the image of me standing at the sink in the commercial kitchen cleaning those eggs tomorrow is starting to take shape in my minds eye ..... didn't I just clean a bazillion eggs the other day??? Ah, but wait a minute, these eggs have to be initially field cleaned right now to get this loose layer of crap (another un-intended pun) off them, otherwise it might dry and be that much more difficult to clean tomorrow. And I have to collect two days worth of chicken eggs. After I get it all finished and the feed buckets are back in the feed cage I take the lucky small broilers back to their small coup, they will live to see another day, for a while that is. All done, I'm on the mower on the way to put it away in the barn and I realize that a farm is always open, there are no holidays, no days off, no vacations etc. and this leads me to contemplate the seriousness of the term "everyday" .... I ask myself, do you realize how often e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y is? It has such a ring of permanence to it, and I think in a very simple kind of way that I am so glad to just be a part of it all, e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y.