We didn't get to (let's call her) Penny's until about 12:30. Her friend Kathy was not pleased because we had been due about an hour and a half before that. Why we were so late could fill another blog post, but none of it is my business to talk about & so I'll stay silent on that subject.
Penny has an injury to her knee that makes it painful for her to walk around and causes her to lose her balance on occasion. She also has a farm to run, with everything from ducks to Belgians living on about an acre. Once when I went to Penny's house, she was out back, and after I walked in the front door I found myself looking down this wolf-dog's throat. His name is "Fang" (yes, that's his real name). Fortunately, Penny also has another dog who makes it his business to protect people from Fang. That is why I still have a throat. I stood frozen just inside the door, unable to leave because dogs like Fang see retreat as proof that they are the winners and attack full out, and unable to go further into the house because that would have enraged him to the point that the other dog would not have been able to hold him off. After about ten minutes, Penny happened to walk back inside and she called him off.
The meat chickens, our business of yesterday, live(d) in a chicken coop about the size of a large bathroom. Because of Penny's injury, the chicken coop hadn't been cleaned in at least a month. It was filled with a clay-like combination of chicken excrement and sawdust. The sun was shining on the chicken coop and the smell was overwhelming. Danny held his nose, then started to gag and walked quickly out. Alex and I held our breath and looked at each other. "We can't work in here," we said simultaneously.
I looked around for Penny, but not finding her, we started moving the apparatus outside: the table made of a 4x8 plywood sheet and two sawhorses, the plucker, the buckets for blood and entrails, and the cone. We were halfway finished when Penny came out of the house. "What's this?" she demanded. Alex got a look of fear on his face. I quailed inwardly, too. Penny angry is one of the scarier things life has to offer. She is not tall, but she is strong and she has a voice you can hear from the other end of Charlotte.
I walked over to her. "Penny, we can't work in there."
"Why not?" she demanded again.
"Because the sun has been shining on the chicken coop roof and warmed it up in there. The smell is awful, and the floor is slippery."
"I wanted all the mess in one place! That's how I had it planned out!" She had talked frequently during the previous several days about how she had it all figured out so that it was "user friendly" to get the chickens through the process. I felt bad for her.
"I know--but the last time we did this, it was so cold that we couldn't smell anything."
"Fine!" she snapped. "Let's not do it. It's too late in the day anyway!" She continued shouting. "I've had it! Just leave it alone! I don't want to do this any more!"
I just looked at her. "Penny, don't be like that. We're here, and I know it's late, but honestly I do my best. I have my own farm to run," I explained, feeling oddly guilty about that fact and resenting feeling guilty.
Alex said, "Let's get started."
We both turned and walked into the chicken coop and started hanging up ropes so we could dangle the chickens by their legs to make them sleepy & calm prior to killing them. Then we got some extension cords and hooked them up to the plucker and the scalder. I started catching chickens and hanging them up.
I first selected a mild white meat hen who was sitting unflappably (ha) on the ground like a forgotten white soccer ball.
She beat me up.
"Do like this!" said Alex, annoyed as only a teenager can be with my ignorance. He grabbed a chicken by the leg and used his forearm to shove its head down. As soon as the head pointed straight down, the wings stopped beating. Wrinkling my nose at the overwhelming stench now augmented by a close view of chicken anus, I took the chicken from him and tried to find a way to hold it by the legs, tie a string around them, and avoid being beaten or scratched. Somehow I managed it, but only because I was wearing the Vermont equivalent of a suit of armor. I tied the string to a nail in the roof and left the chicken to hang there. She flapped around a bit and then hung still.
I tried not to breathe as I picked up the next chicken. White feathers spotted with the chicken excrement/sawdust mixture. Flapping wings beating on me and flinging said mixture in every direction--on my clothes, my face, in my hair, sometimes in my eyes, and once, perilously close to my mouth. Claws scratching and clutching and digging into my hands (I had to leave my gloves off so I could tie the strings). I swore and stuffed her head down with my forearm, then tried to ignore what I had to touch and smell and see as I tied strings around the bird's legs. Another one done. I hung it up and looked for the next one.
I spotted another deceptively calm white hen, reached gently under her and grabbed a leg. Something squished between my fingers and I said involuntarily, "Ugh."
Alex glanced my way. "You all right?"
"Yeah, it's just disgusting. How did you and I end up getting stuck in here?"
He laughed. "I know."
Poetic justice, I guess, I thought as I pushed the hen's head down and started trying to get the baling twine around the shit-covered feet.
I heard intense squabbling behind me. "One down!" said Alex cheerfully, tossing a chicken head into a bucket. Now here is where you might want to close your eyes. I'll tell you when it's over--look below for bold lettering.
We both watched as the hen flapped around on the end of the string. Blood went everywhere, mixing with the chicken shit and sawdust slime on the ground, spattering our clothes and our faces.
"Maybe we should use the cone," I suggested.
"I don't know how to use that thing," said Alex. "At home, we have a chopping block and an axe. You grab a chicken, put it down and hold it stretched out. One chop and you toss the head one way and the chicken the other way. Somebody else grabs the chicken and keeps it from bruising itself."
"Ah," I said. "Penny doesn't have an axe."
"I know," said Alex, "I already asked her. And she doesn't have a chopping block, either." He looked at me, the gore-covered knife hanging dripping in his hand.
We watched with loathing as the chicken slowly stopped flapping around. Usually when a chicken is flapping around so much, you hear it screaming, "Buck, buck, buck, buck buuuuuuck!" It was weird to see this one making the same visual kerfuffle without the sound effects.
In the end a large puddle of blood lay shining on the wet, clay-like chicken shit floor. We left that chicken to drain out and I caught another while Alex killed the next one.
It's safe to read now.
This routine continued. I deliberately didn't watch whenever I knew Alex was making a cut. I noticed a metallic element to the odor.
After another 5 chickens, Alex said, "This knife is dull. I can't kill the chicken with one cut."
Stop reading again.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Would it help to use the cone?"
'I doubt it." He started on the next chicken, and this time I watched to see what the problem was. What I saw made me almost sick enough to vomit.
Alex stretched out the chicken's neck, sliced at it, and opened up an artery. He made another cut, and then started to hack, and it took maybe three more hacks to get the chicken's head off.
"I'm sorry!" he said, noticing my face. "It's this stupid knife!"
He looked as upset as I felt. "Here, let me have it," I said. "It's not your fault."
"I know, but I hate doing it like this!"
It's safe again.
"Can I try one?" It was Alex's little cousin, watching through a window.
"NO," said Alex, firmly. "You stay out of here." He sounded so much like a kid talking to a youner relative that I wanted to tell him the same thing. But Alex comes from a tough family of chicken and turkey savvy Vermonters. His gruesome task may have bothered him, but he wouldn't lose sleep or have nightmares.
I, on the other hand.... But I wasn't going to indulge myself. Looking at the situation dispassionately, the chickens were just plain going to be losers today, more so than I would have liked. Penny was hurt and couldn't try to walk on the slime; James the expert chicken-killer was not available; Kathy was a grey-haired birdlike woman wearing a wool dress coat (no help there); our only other two helpers were my son Danny and Alex's ten-year-old cousin. I didn't want Danny even watching what was going on in the chicken coop, much less helping us. Furthermore, Penny was spending hundreds of dollars a week feeding her various animals. She couldn't do the work herself and so they either went hungry or she was relying on people like her neighbors to feed them, and Lord knows each one of us was maxxed out just trying to tread water. Turning those chickens into food, and doing it that day when Alex and I could be there to help, was the only intelligent choice to make. And I'm sorry, little chicken ghosts, that you couldn't die more gently.
The only comfort is that chickens are horrid creatures. A chicken is basically a limbic system with claws, feathers, and a beak. No higher-order thoughts exist in chickens' minds. They are pure impulse. Witness the fact that...
Cover your eyes again.
...the ones who were waiting to be chosen not only displayed no fear, but they were drawn to the already-dead chickens and pecked at their bloody necks and at the blood on the floor. They pulled on the gore hanging down from the severed necks, and I have to tell you that once I saw that, I got over my distress at the fact that we were killing the little bastards.
Okay, it's safe.
Time wore on slowly in that horrid, stench-filled coop. (I now understand why "cooped up" came into common useage to describe a claustrophobic feeling. It is truly awful. Chicken stench is second only to dog stench in obnoxiousness.) But there we were until the job was done: I grabbed, tied (sometimes Alex had a minute to help me tie the strings on), and hung, Alex did the same, but also cut them, and whenever his knife's edge wore down I went and sharpened it. After a little while I stuck the sharpener into my ski pants belt loop like a light sabre, then took the knife, wiped it on some snow outside, leaving a trail of gore, and then sharpened it and gave it back to Alex. He grabbed and tied whenever I did that.
About halfway through, I realized that the little red chickens among the white ones were difficult to catch. "We probably should catch these little guys before we can't crowd them in with the slower ones," I said. I snatched at one.
Air.
What the...? I could have sworn I had it's feet! I snatched again, and was again handily avoided. The next one left a tail feather in my hand. But finally I cornered one and caught it. It flapped and scratched and dug a sharp set of claws into my index finger, puncuring the skin and drawing blood. "Ick!" I said. Germy little cretan bird!
I handed him to Alex. "He's Next," I said.
He looked at me and laughed. "What'd he do?"
"He gave me a puncture wound."
"You better get a band-aid," said Alex.
"Penny, you got band-aids?" I asked.
"What?" from outside.
"Never mind." I just wanted to finish and get the hell out of there.
So, grimly, we worked. The smell got worse as the manure was kicked up, flapped around, and mixed with blood and gore.
I hated every minute in that chicken coop. Usually, no matter how bad your minutes are, if somebody asked you, "Would you rather live those minutes or die a few minutes early and skip them?" most of us would say we prefer to live that life, our lives, at almost any given moment, even the painful moments. But that time in the chicken coop I would trade.
Finally, the last chicken was dead and hanging. We emerged into the dying sunlight for the next step--cleaning the birds.
Our table was set up in the middle of all the animal pens. The wind came through, and though the day was unusually warm (37F), wet hands became quickly extremely cold. But you could warm them up with each chicken.
Each chicken was first dunked in the hot water the scalder kept warm. Unfortunately, the scalder had a short, which meant that if you tried to put a chicken in it you got a shock. So Penny used the baling twine that was around each chicken's legs to dip it into the water and bob it up and down for a few minutes.
Then the chicken went to the plucker: a machine that looked rather like a music box, and worked on the same principle, except the drum was of course much larger--the size of a toaster oven--and the little knobs sticking off of the wheel were rubbery spirals. The wheel spun rapidly and somebody would hold a chicken by the legs and let is ride along on the vibrating rubber thingies, turning it and adjusting it so that the rubber thingies could drag the feathers out by the follicles.
After the de-feathering, the chicken came to the table to be "cleaned." First, you cut a slit on the right side of the neck as it faces you, and take out a little pouch full of food that was attached to the skin at what you might think of as the chicken's shoulder. Then you flip the bird around and cut horizontally just above the anus, or about and inch and a half up from the tail (the bird is lying on its back). Then you reach in and grab the entrails and pull, trying not to break them and you pull them out in a big gobby mess. That's when your hands get warmed up.
The innards should end up lying on the table attached still to the bird at the anus. You cut that out and discard the tail and whatever entrails you don't need for soup.
Danny enjoyed this part. I gave him a whole set of entrails and he examined and dissected everything he found: kidneys, liver, lungs, heart, spleen, and gizzard. "I found the left ventricle!" he would say, or "What's this called?" holding up the spleen oozing its green pigmented fluid.
Just as the sun was going down, we finished, shivering and exhausted. I had taken one break to go home and get Mikey. I tried to eat a little before I went back, but although I was hungry, all food looked like the product of horrible processes, and I couldn't stomach anything except a few carrots.
We gathered up the hose, disposed of the entrails, threw the bad chicken carcasses to the wildlife (those with infections or that were otherwise uneatable), put the plucker on the porch, and got out of there. I felt by then like Dante escaping from the lowest pit of the Inferno.
At home, I wanted a drink, but I had to feed my horses and Cow. I was shivering as I went back out to the barn and gave out grain, hay, and water. I also felt contaminated with chicken blood. Danny stoked the fire and Mikey started emptying the dishwasher. I had two cases of chicken carcasses with me for cutting up and freezing, so after dinner and after the children were in bed, I came back downstairs and started cutting the birds into pieces for freezing.
I did about ten of them before my hands started to swell up. I had a few painful cuts that needed soap and water and a night's rest to fight the rampant bacteria that was in them. So I poured ice over the chickens that were in the house, made sure the lid was secure on the ones that were outside, got a class of wine, and finally sat down on the sofa with my laptop. I chatted with an old friend for a while, then gave it up and fell into a reddish-tinged sleep in which the images of the day flickered across my mind and made me jump awake a few times.
I went and listened to my children breathe, trying to put it all into place somehow. Death in life, life in death. I feel the dot from the ying and yang image in my own chest, the tension of death and life and how I live on the edge of a blade, pulled both ways, for the brief time that God inhales once and then I wave to my carefully balanced children as I finally fall.
I found my glasses and went back to bed with a book. As I lay in bed I heard the coyotes start singing, probably over in that big meadow I like to gallop across and where if I ever fall off, people will not find me unless they know me really well. Why are they singing? I wondered. Must be a rabbit.
An owl hooted. "Who cooks, who cooks, who cooks for yoooooouuuuuu," he sang, with a dying fall. If music be the food of love, play on, I thought, ridiculously, not knowing that the next day I would find in the driveway the duck's carcass that he had eaten only the head off of, in his fastidious, owl-like way. Owls like brains and they like what they can reach down a carcass's neck--that's all. I wish they would invite the bobcats for dinner, at least, instead of leaving so much to go to waste.
After a long while I fell into another restless sleep that lasted until morning.
I love coming across objects that tell a story.
