The Deed is Done - Part Two

The roast chicken was WONDERFUL!! I thought I might not be in the right frame of mind to eat chicken for a while but I was and it was so good. It did not bother me one bit to know that just 48 hours before, that chicken had been prancing around in my pasture. I knew his purpose from the beginning and, oh, what a gift he provided for me. I think overall it was a win/win situation. I picture him in chicken heaven right now eating all he wants and with no concern of getting too fat for his little legs.

Let me pick up where I left off yesterday.

Station Seven -

Bagging and Refrigeration. After the chickens were rinsed (did I mention all of the rinsing that went on in each of the other stages? Well, a LOT of rinsing was going on. We run a clean operation.) and drained of excess water, two people handled the bagging. Since these chickens were so big, it took one person to hold the bag and the other to slide the bird in. The bags were twist tied then immediately put either into a cooler of ice or on a rack in the refrigerator. Even though our chickens were thoroughly cooled at the time of bagging, we still wanted to make sure they had adequate circulation all around them as they remained cold for the next 24 hours.

That was it. All of the official stations.

Next step for the birds was to be held in ice or in refrigeration for a full 24 hours before putting them in the freezer. If you don't wait, then the birds may be tough and we certainly didn't want tough birds after all of that work. Freezer space was at a premium around here but between Kristin taking some home to her freezer and alot of freezer management going on, we were able to secure a frozen home for all 69 birds.

23 of these birds are Hadley's and he decided to turn his into a community service project. He has a keen interest in business and investing, so he decided to donate all of his profits to a microfinance lending organization called Kiva Microfunds. You can find our more about Kiva at www.kiva.org. He has not sent out his letter yet, but I think he will find homes for his frozen friends fairly easily because we have a great group of friends that have followed our Chicken Project adventure and they have been enthusiastically supportive throughout the whole thing. It was a good experience for him to experience firsthand the hard work that many of these very small third world business owners go through when they are borrowing what seem like very small amounts of money to start a business - like raising chickens, for example.

I mentioned that it had rained about midday during our chicken processing. Wow, it poured! We haven't had any rain in about 2 months and we have cracks in the ground 2 inches wide. So we desperately needed the rain. I am learning that farmers who need rain do NOT complain at its timing when the sky finally does open up and let it flow. I was in that camp this weekend. Though we got over 3 1/2 inches the day of processing, I was elated to see it rain. Since we had a great group of people that were helping us process, they didn't complain either. It is truly amazing what a difference in attitude can make in a less than optimal situation.

I need to run now. We are leaving tomorrow for a while. Kent's parents are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary with a Carribean cruise for the whole family. We will be gone a week. Quite a change from feeding chickens and moving chicken tractors.

The Chicken Project is officially over, but I'll continue to blog. We've had exciting news this past week that promises to be the topic of my next series - The Cattle Project. Stay tuned.

Until then, eat clean, be kind, and happiness will come on its own.

Mary Ann