Turkey time

My mother emailed me to ask if I was still alive, so I guess it's time that I break radio silence and update the blog. Pillars is a great farm and we've been having a good time. There are a lot of people here our own age and it's been fun hanging out after work. We watch movies and, recently since it's been snowing, going "sledging" through sheep pastures. It feels a little like being home again and that is very mentally refreshing. Which is good, considering our work has been physically stressful. The following is going to be graphic, so if you are really squeamish, maybe you shouldn't continue.

So what have we been doing for work? Well, if you've been reading my facebook posts, you already know that we've been dealing with dead turkeys all week. A week ago Monday, we met down in the staff room at 5am to begin the gruesome task of slaughtering the farm's 130 remaining turkeys. They've apparently lost more than half of their birds to a disease called "blackhead," and these tough few were the survivors. Turkeys have terrible eye sight in the dark, so our early morning raid was designed to keep them as calm as possible. If they turkeys can't see us then they won't panic. They did remain strangely calm throughout the process, which I would count as a blessing.

My task for the three hours it took to kill them all was to grab turkeys by their legs and flip them over. After a very short struggle, I carried the limp turkey over to a wooden frame set up with metal cones and put the turkey head-down through a cone. Something about being upside down kind of puts the turkeys into a trance and keeps them calm. Next our host electrocuted each turkey and slit its throat. The blood drained out and Josh lifted them out to the tractor outside the shed. It was over a little after 8:00am, just as the sun was beginning to rise. We had breakfast and then the plucking team started to arrive.

Plucking the turkeys was definitely worse than the slaughter. This process was gross and smelly. The feathers had to be ripped out without tearing the skin, which required a finesse that I had trouble getting the hang of. The worst part was the little immature feathers, that when pulled out, oozed this weird, black puss that smelled and got everywhere. Yuck. Finally, the naked turkeys had their feet tied together and were hung up to age for a week in a cold environment.

Yesterday, after a good aging, we eviscerated them. Well, Josh and I mostly dealt with all the other stuff that made the gutting go smoothly. I volunteered to gut a couple of turkeys as a learning experience. First the head has to be ripped off and then the wind pipe and crop separated from the muscles. The crop is a slimy, pale sack that is hard to distinguish from the other inside bits. On both of the turkeys I gutted, I had to get help removing the crop. Next, the turkey is flipped over and a triangle is cut around its anus. This allows one's hand to reach into the cavity of the bird and grab the gizzard. A good yank and the whole intestinal system comes out. Then you just fish around a bit for the liver and heart, which are saved along with the neck for the customer to enjoy. After that, I went back to my previous tasks, which involved alternating between hacking the feet off of the turkeys and bagging and weighing the finished carcasses.

So that's how your organic, free-range Thanksgiving and Christmas birds come to you ready for the oven. Though it at times grossed me out, I'm glad I went through with the experience. I feel it is important that if I am going to continue to eat meat, that I have to know where it comes from and what it takes for it to get from the farm to my table.

But just in case you think all we do is kill animals, I have to say that most of our work on the farm involves vegetables and collecting eggs. We spend a lot of time bagging kale and potatoes and cleaning and sorting eggs. Not bad, really.