not for the faint of heart to read

Last Friday I had the interesting experience of helping with the poultry operation by… killing things. Well, actually I didn’t kill anything. Since there are so many birds here they hire some butchers to come in and take care of all the birds in one morning (about 100 birds). Those who are faint of heart should stop here, I’m gonna describe this in some detail for those who are interested. So the meat chickens and guinea hens were all caught in small cages to make em easy to get. My job was to grab them and hand them to the butchers 3 at a time. It is amazing how calm and easy to hold the birds get once they have been grabbed, especially when held upside down by the feet. They were then put upside down into a conical container with a slit for the head and neck. They were killed quickly by chopping the head off. But for anyone who’s never seen a bird killed, this is where it gets crazy because the bird, seconds earlier totally still and compliant, suddenly upon death began to kick and squawk and convulse. Once finally still, the birds were put into scalding water and then into a washer-looking machine which spins them around and somehow manages to pull off all the feathers. It was really amazing how clean that machine got the birds. Then they are cleaned up and dropped into cold water, and again into a different bucket of cold water to be sure they are kept cold and cleaned. And from there we took them later in the day, drained ‘em, and put into ziplocks to sell.

It sounds really heartless to explain it away to mechanically and methodically here. But I guess that partly related to the American fear and stigmatization of death. Well, it was hard for me at times to not feel sorry for these birds and to not dwell on the fact that I was basically handing them to death. But, I guess sometimes it’s necessary to turn off that part of the human brain, in order to eat and survive and continue along your own life. Perhaps that is a heartless and unfair way to look at life, survival of me is most important. I can now as I look back think about mortality and frailty and all that. Overall, I have to say it is a relief to have all those noisy smelly birds out of here…

I have been pet sitting for the neighbors all last week but I’m back home to the farm I’m working at now. And it’s Sunday, which means sitting around reading Anna Karenina all day! In annoying news, youth hunting season has begun, so whenever I leave the house I now have to wear my chartreuse fleece and red apple hat that I picked up at the resale store specially for this occasion. This morning as I walking along the road I saw a 10-year-old boy tripping and struggling to get out of the long grass onto the road. I mean, if he can’t even walk in the underbrush, what makes him think he deserves to carry a gun well tripping and stumbling? Sure makes me feel safe to be out there, let me tell you!