Not for the Faint of Heart Take II
So the chickens are all in the freezer… it’s coming up on Thanksgiving… which means it’s time for Turkey Killing!
I spent the last two days processing a total of 160 some turkeys. Since I worked almost all the parts at some time during the week, I can describe the whole process in some detail. In case you are all wondering how your turkeys got to your tables. SPECIAL HOLIDAY UPDATE! Wooo eeeeee.
Ok, so you have a pen of cute turkeys.. going “tock tock. Tock tock” and looking at you stupidly but oh so innocently. The killer goes in a grabs one and turns it upside down in a chute and cuts through the jugular and around the neck. Can’t cut through the neck though, cause you get them in your turkeys. So once the bird is fully dead and the blood drained and all, it is taken by the scaulder, who has the hardest job (which I never did at all, by the way). He puts the bird into a tank of water at 148 degrees. The hard part is if the water gets too hot or the bird is in too long, it will burn and rip, but if it’s not in long enough, the feathers don’t come off well. He dunks the bird into a tank of chilled water where someone pulls off the flight and tail feathers. Then the plucker grabs the bird and carries it to this awesome machine which consistes of a bunch of rubber pieces spinning really really fast around. The plucker has to grab the bird really well by the feet and kinda let it slide into the chute so that the feathers are pulled of by the rubber bits, and then swing/slide it around so that all the feathers come off. Or at least most of them. this was my favorite job and what I did most of the day today. It’s a total adrenaline rush to be holding onto this bird and trying to move it around to get maximum feathers off but not ripping or bruising the bird, and DEFINATELY not letting go… which happened to me once Opps.
Next the birds go to the hand pluckers, a boring tedious job of cutting of the head and feet and then taking out all the feathers that the plucker missed. And then to be gutted. Cut the neck out and remove the crop, and then cut out the asshole and stick it up through the slit cut into the bottom and pull out all the guts hopefully intact and then save the heart, liver, and gizzard into buckets to soak and chill. And then dunk the whole turkey into a tank of cold water. They get all their insides dumped of the warmed water several times and moved into progressively colder and cleaner tanks and finally into big tanks full of ice where they are left for a few hours to cool out while we all left for lunch.
After lunch is packaging. So you drain the turkeys really well and put all the parts (heart liver gizzard) into a bag. And then dry off each turkey and look it over to be sure every feather is off. Some of those feathers are major pains, too. Especially if other turkeys have picked at a bird, they get like infected and blocked up and you have to pick and cut at the skin to get the feather head out. And make sure all the guts are out and the cavity is dried, and then put a neck and bag of guts inside. Then the really hard part of twisting the legs around and mangling them to the point that you can fit them up into that wierd flap. And put it into a bag, the bag gets vacuum suctioned so all the air is out, scauld it one last time to seal the bag on, weigh it, freeze it, and sell it!
Don’t you want to sit down to turkey dinner now?
I say good bye to Vermont tomorrow. It is really pretty here, but I’m not sure yet what I think of Vermont culture. Social economic status is very important and varied here it seems. Well, I would need to live here longer and socialize more to really make a generalization, but it sure ain’t Michigan or California out here! East coasters, I guess. It is amazing though how totally comfortable I feel here at the farm though. It feels like I’ve been here forever. Or at least like I just belong here. It feels like home. And all the animals feel like my companions.
I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving dinner for real and good family time!