NY Chicken Slaughter 2009

Brett, Doogie and I headed up to the Rochester area of NY this past Friday. My parents live in Penfield, and friends Andy & Kelli live about 20 minutes out of town. Last year they raised 40 chickens, which they slaughtered for their own cooking and some to share. This year they nearly doubled the amount, ending up with 75 chickens raised organically out in their yard.


After hearing about the process last year, I said I'd be willing to help this year - or at least try. I wasn't sure if I could follow through with the killing, but I could try to help. I wasn't the only one, both Andy and Kelli's parents, plus a few other friends, came out to help. Here's Andy showing there the chickens will be supported upside down before, um, "being drained".


And here's the first of the chickens resting nice and cozy in their cones.


For the first half of the chickens, I stuck at the head-and-leg-removal station. No chicken got past with with a head or feet. SOME chickens made it to my station missing a head - there were a few accidents in the Whizz Bang Chicken Plucker. Eh, by that time they were in no condition to miss their heads, trust me.


For the second half of the chickens, I toughened up and helps catch and kill the chickens. Boy was it an eye-opener. Some folks want to think their food is raised boneless, on a styrofoam tray. I think I have a bit more respect and understand for where my meat comes from now...

To see PLENTY more pictures, click on the image below to get to the complete image gallery. I keep the pictures pretty safe for the most part, going through the whole day...and only show the more gruesome stuff AFTER you get a warning. That way you can decide if you want to see the bloodier parts.

Pics 2009-07-29 More Chicken Slaughter pics

Bok bok bok!

What do these three things have in common? Check back tomorrow, when I HOPE to have a full post on this past weekend's festivities!

Hot n stormy

So last week there was a day I was working from home and it was all hot and sunny out. REEEEEALLY sunny. You couldn't help but want to just lounge in the sun even though it was making you sweat:


Well, ok, that was what Doogie thought. I was actually working in the shade. I think Tucker had the best idea.


But then the breezes slowly started picking up, and biiiig ominous looking clouds were moving in.


Zooming in a bit, and looking north towards Ravenna where Dave and Anita live, it looked like bigger, more dooming clouds were already opening up on the city.


This one made me think of a hotdog in a bun!


It wasn't too long before the skies opened up and we had to bring the "party" indoors (and by "party", I mean "PHP coding for work - yay fun!").


Oh well - Doogie wasn't too bothered by the change of location.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETER!!!

Let's all take a moment to wish my great friend Peter a Very Happy Birthday today!!!



This picture is from just over a year ago and, wow, I was looking kinda porky in the picture. Peter, as always, looks skinny as a rail...

Happy Birthday Peter!!!!

Curly Qs

I've been realizing some of the more simple things in the garden can also be some of the most interesting. Take the vines and tendrils in the cucumber/gourd bed for example!

This one clearly decided it wasn't going to find anything of real substance, and so it just latched on to whatever it could. I'm thinking that leaf's not going to provide too much support for the plant and fruit belonging to that tendril!


Loop-di-loop!


This one's being very non-committal, and is waiting til it finds juuuust the right place to latch on.


This one creeps me out, reminding me of a skeletal hand. Hell, if you've seen the movie Coraline (just released on DVD recently), it reminded me of The Other Mother's (played by Teri Hatcher) hand.


This one here obviously started off on it's journey without a plan....but managed to get somewhere worthy after taking a few detours.


"Oh shit - now what!?!?"


Not much simpler than a plain ol' straight line!


Although a simple curl also has a lot of beauty to it.


I definitely think this one's my most favorite...something about it seems fern-like, or like a musical note?


For some reason I'm craving pretzels!


With some of these you can almost image you just heard the crack of a whip as it latched onto the trellis supports!


Someone needs to ease off the caffeine just a little bit I think! In fact...


...that's just part of the picture. Seriously - this was one busy mess... Is this where the spirals for spiral-bound notebooks come from!?

Soak up the sun

With the dreary weather we've been having, I thought it might be nice to go back and collect a bunch of the SUNNIER pictures I've taken lately. Or more specifically, those spotlighting one of my favorite flowers in the garden. You can practically feel the solar energy flowing out of this one and gently warming your face.


But how often do you take a moment to REALLY look at a sunflower? And not just see it for the bright yellow petals? Check out the interesting detail with all those seeds.


These three have been sitting in a jar of water on the deck for over a week now, and they still look great.


Looks like maybe they're fighting for attention though...


Heck, sunflowers are just as interesting when viewed from the side.


Here's a close up of one of the volunteers under the bird feeder. Something tells me it won't be too much longer before the birds are enjoying the free snacks!


When you goof and leave the flash on while aiming up at a sunflower, holding the camera in it's shadow, the flash goes off and make the flower appear to really glow!


I think this ones just being coy.


While this one here has a friend...


This here's the largest sunflower in the yard - and looks very different from all the others. Again, they're all volunteers - all of the OOOOOLD seeds I planted intentionally failed to come up (plus they were planted in the shade of the squash and pumpkin plants) - so I'll need to replace them next year. I think this one is bigger across than my outstretched hand...


There's been some discussion lately over at the Gardens at Melissa Majora: A honeybee sanctuary, about whether or not we're seeing many bumblebees in the area lately. I THOUGHT I had, but upon closer inspection I think most of my fat bees are actually carpenter bees. This one, however, looked like a bumblebee to me! (Sorry, he didn't sit around long enough for a close up)


And speaking of bees (and off the topic of sunflowers), this critter seemed to have really gone a little overdosing in the flowers. I found her on a pumpkin leaf, clearly overwhelmed with too much pollen.


She kept trying to clean herself, and then she'd try to fly, wobble around a bit, and then land for more cleaning.



Maybe she just isn't ready to accept she "has a problem" and needs to be hitting the pollen a little less? I don't know if I'm authorized to issue tickets for bees "FUI" (Flying Under the Influence)??

Yummy soup!

I've been itching to make something with my leeks lately, and so this week decided it was time to dig some up and make some soup! This rainy, chilly weather is definitely great for soup...so let's get started.

From the garden:
- 3 medium sized leeks. Dark green parts removed; the white and light green part halved and sliced thinly
- a good handful of Niro Di Toscana kale (the really dark green stuff on the left)
- a couple big leaves of swiss chard - the stalks separated from the leaves and chopped, the leaves sliced thinly
- parsley
- chives
- a clove of freshly dug up garlic
- a pattypan squash that was looking lonely on the counter - halved and sliced thinly


From the pantry/fridge/etc:
- 2/3 of a box of chicken broth that was leftover from something else
- 1 chicken boullion cube (could have left this out to reduce saltiness)
- 4 large potatoes, peeled and chopped
- 1 can butter beans
- water to add to the pot
- olive oil
- salt and pepper
- and a box of Cheeseburger Hamburger Helper for Brett, who in no way would touch a leek potato kale soup with "all that green stuff in it"


Start by sauteing the leeks in olive oil over low-to-medium heat until they get tender (maybe 8 minutes?). Season with a little salt and pepper. Add the chopped swiss chard stem during this period so it tenderizes a bit. Add in the remaining ingredients, adding enough water to cover all the veggies by about an inch, bring to a boil, and then simmer for about an hour. It probably could've gone much less, but I was busy and letting it get REALLY soft.

Once it's cooked to the tenderness you like taste and adjust the seasonings. Then I whizzed it briefly with the immersion blender to make the overall soup somewhat creamy, while still leaving plenty of whole beans and chunks of potatoes and squash.

Enjoy!

The walk of wet shame, plus recent pickings!

NOTE: If you're reading this posting on Facebook, but aren't seeing the pictures, it's because Facebook seems to have done something different recently that's not allowing the blog pictures to come through. I've found numerous forum postings on line with people griping about this, but so far, no solution. So in the meantime, if you want to see the pics that go with this posting, just click on over to the blog. Sorry....

http://jephers.blogspot.com/

Aren't you glad you don't have to go outside to use the restroom. Unfortunately, it's the not the same rule for all of us... No matter how much it's raining, so of us HAVE to go outside...


And when the rain's really coming down, you do what you gotta do ASAP, with no dilly dallying around, no smelling the flowers, nuthin'. Get out there, get it done...


...and then do the walk of wet shame as you come back in for your towel drying, knowing that too many days of this is making you stink like, well, a wet dog - and that means you're due for a bath.


Unnnnnhappy puppy!

We're close to an inch of rain for today. We've actually had some days recently when it HASN'T rained. Like last week, when I was working from home one day, and it was beautiful out, and there was the first ripe tomato...that lead to the first BLT of the season. MMM!


And then there was the day I tugged at some carrots to see how they were coming along, and wow, they're looking more like carrots! AND they were tasting more like carrots too! (Trust me, some carrots DON'T taste very good unless they're ready to be dug up!) What the heck...I was cleaning out the bed, I might as well cut one of the really undersized cabbages - just to see how they look inside.


Not too bad for my first cabbage!!!


Hmmmm! Brainstorm! What else goes in coleslaw? I grabbed a not-fully-developed bell pepper, an onion...


...and the Nicer Dicer I got as a Christmas gift (not as goofy as it sounds!)


Add to that some salt, pepper, mayo and lemon juice - and before I knew it, I was eating homegrown coleslaw! COOL!! (Now if only Brett would let me have chickens, then I could've been making my own mayo as well!)


This Monday I picked the biggest load of green beans yet - just over a pound's worth!! PLUS more cukes! (I really need to start making pickles soon!)


And I dug up the garlic this week. They're scrawny. I've never had garlic NOT be scrawny. But the few times I've grown it, I've just used grocery store garlic cloves. For this fall I've pre-ordered one variety of hardneck garlic and one variety of softneck garlic, both intended for planting (so hopefully they'll come with big cloves?), and we'll see how it goes. Oh, and a problem with growing your own garlic? Some of it STINKS while it dries, and this is not good "leave it outdoors for a week to dry" weather. And it's certainly not coming INDOORS until I nail down if there's some rotted cloves. So for now it's under the gazebo. Stinking.


Yesterday was one of the biggest harvests yet! In preparation for not being around the garden for a few days, I picked EVERY SQUASH I could find, figuring even the smallest would be oversized by the end of the weekend.


This was my biggest picking of green beans so far this season - just over two pounds!!!


The squash went in to work with me today, and most of them had been claimed by the time I left. The cucumbers got stuffed in the crisper drawer. Remember, I need to make pickles REAL soon!


That's all for now.... Hopefully before too much longer you'll be seeing more RED in these veggie-picking posts!