27 August, 2007

The Farm Journal












After spending the summer as a vegetarian, I felt that if I was going to begin eating meat again, I should butcher it myself. Do It Yourself, right?


I guess I was hoping that butchering a rooster would give me a clear revelation to the fleeting moments in between life and death. The only insight I got was the calm that came over me before I cut the little birds head off. It was like I realized the responsibility of taking a life. It was a sobering quiet that I was unable to reflect upon in the moment.
There is something very straight about a chicken’s neck on a chopping block.

When you grab a chicken by the ankles and turn them upside down they fall into a funny trance of calm. Elizabeth psyched her self up, which I found interesting because has the demeanor of a no nonsense kind of lady who is unflappable by the minor occurrence of barnyard butchery.

She came out of the coop with rooster held by the ankles in her gloved hand.
I felt like a Japanese tourist trying to snap a few shots of the whole bird before he transcended the yard and gave us dinner. Elizabeth was accommodating, and patiently showed me how to hold the bird’s ankles and wings to block. Then she chopped. I stared, quite calm and still inside.
Elizebeth didn't hesistate, and went to the coop to retrieve another rooster. The bird that I would butcher.
This time we reversed roles, and Elizabeth held the fouls wings and claws to the block while I held his neck in one hand, and the ax in the other. I had sharpened the knives earlier, but had figured the Elizabeth Verengle, woman of all things barnyard, was current in ax care. I had never been good at baseball, and wondered if this was like knocking a ball into center field.
It took 3 maybe 4 swings to remove its neck. I paused after the roosters head plunked to the ground. Its heart was still beating, and noise could be heard from its wiry throat, but it was dead. This lead me to wonder if life resides in the head.

I didn’t have much time to think about that sort of stuff as I tied the birds ankles up with jute, and began to pull the soft feathers from its ankles. Verengle let a cigarette dangle from her lips as she pointed out the finer details to dressing a bird, we needed to be swift before the poultry cooled and hardened around the feathers. Once the bird was plucked, you use a candle to singe the long cource hairs that remain.
After this, we took the birds into the kitchen to prepare. Verengle fried me up an egg as she shared her stories of growing up during the Nazi occupation of Germany.
She and her sister were so hungry that they used to sneak into the chicken coop to eat egg yolks. She would puncture two holes in the egg shell, and suck out the insides.
I thought about this as she showed me how to gut a rooster. You have to frugial and careful. When you get to the liver, you will find that the gall bladder is connected to it. Do Not rupture this, or the whole deal is done, over, ruined. Apparently the gallbladder is nasty, and will taint a bird.

We saved the remains of the liver and heart. I was pleased to hear that the heart is the strongest organ of the bird form. It gave me hope for myself.
I washed all of the parts and packed it in a container for a dinner Verengle planned for latter in the week, then went home and slept for 4 hours straight.

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