Lower 70s, overcast, light breeze. We couldn’t have ordered up any better weather for the work we were about to begin. At 8:30 am the ceremonial recital of Farm Country was complete, and the machete makes its first mark on the chopping block.

This year marks the 5th year of the Jochim Chicken Plucking Festival, the fourth one we’ve participated in. If there is anyone in the area that knows how to butcher chickens, it’s our crew, that annually gets together to partake in this rite of passage. For most of us, the novelty of the event has worn off. Perhaps I was the only one who thought of it that way to begin with. There’s the typical trash talking and commentary that goes around to make the day interesting of course, but everyone who participates regularly has fallen into a focus and determination, where the day is just the means to the end result, a freezer full of fresh, organic chicken meat.

Our assembly line system, or rather, our disassembly line system, has become so refined, and the laborers so skilled and experienced, that the process gains speed every year. Granted, less birds survived this year, 89 total. But our pace was still impressive.

I start cleaning feathers. The chickens in the kill box smell pretty bad. Chickens really are nasty creatures. I like dead ones a lot more than live ones! I move over to the gutting table for a while. The experience of putting your hand into the warm carcass of a bird that was alive five minutes ago is one you just don’t forget. I did my first real gutting last year, but it seems to be like riding a bicycle. No problems, I didn’t bust the gall bladder one time when cutting the liver and gizzards out. Had troubles with that last year. I’m the floater this year, I move over to the cleaning station for a while. I end up there most the rest of the day, moving around when other stations need extra help.

12 noon, lunch break, 59 birds done. Kenda presents the 5th anniversary cake, and we drink a toast to, well, I’m not sure really. The birds? It’s unfortunate for the birds that the qualities we value in them are their ability to die quietly, lose their feathers easily, and how fat they’ve become in the short lives.

Back on the line at 1pm. Last bird through the system at 3:30, good thing because the sun has broken through the clouds, and it’s getting muggy, making the bugs pretty bad. The crew on the front end of the line already have the line broken down and cleaned up. We had enough time to sit on the porch and relax for a bit before heading home.

I don’t have final numbers, but three birds weighed in at 7.25 pounds (cleaned weight), one at 7, and the smallest at 4.5. From a look at the raw data, our average had to be over 6 pounds, putting us a half pound per bird over last year’s average.

At the end of the day, Brian, this year’s Rookie, says “It was a good experience.” My response: “We don’t do it for the experience anymore, we do it for the birds.”

Here, in all it’s glory, is the reason we sacrifice a day in June to butcher chickens. A freezer full of a dozen turkey-sized chickens, along with our half cow.

It’s 9pm as I write this up. When I close my eyes, I still see the insides of a chicken carcass. I still feel the ribs on my fingers from swiping lungs out all afternoon. We won’t have chicken for dinner for a while, and for good reason. It takes some time to recover from the process.

Happy eating, chicken crew! See you all next year.

  

http://bloomington.craigslist.org/apa/1317115265.html

The listing has done pretty well. I received five phone calls the first day, and have a couple serious leads. But, I have also received two scam attempts in 24 hours, as well as what I would assume is a third attempt that was abandonded. It is amazing how similar the structure is of these scams. If these people had half a brain, they would tweak the language in the e-mails to at least try to make it sound legit. Then again, if these people were intelligent at all, they wouldn’t need to try to steal from others to make a living. Perhaps they have a bright future in government!

Here are the scams:
—————————————————-

http://www.callferret.com/447031959952.html

I will be in the states for the next one year with my wife. we have a financier that is based in the states and he will be handling the rent deposit payment on our behalf,we will instruct him to send you the check for this as soon as you give us the go ahead to make payment to you.

Due to the limited time that we have before our arrival,we are making arrangements with a furniture company to supply the home with furniture,so we will need you to provide us with the measurements of the living room and bedroom so that we can send it to the furniture company so that they can supply the unit with furniture that will fit in well.

We can start the lease asap and we will be doing a one year lease You can prepare the lease in my my name Dr john Porter and my wife’s name Mrs Nancy Porter Let us know how to move ahead as we intend to complete this deal before we move in we will let you know the exact date as soon as we get a booking on a flight to the states.

As regards the rent and deposit required to be paid by me in order to
secure this rental prior to our arrival,i will need you to provide me with your full name,cell number both home and office.

The check will be issued to your complete physical contact address,as soon as you provide these and give go-ahead,i will forward it to my financier with an instruction to issue and send you the check.Please i need you to also reconfirm the total move in costs,that is the rent and deposit to be paid.

Also i would like to know more about about the power and phone company if there is anyone i will need to be contacting,PS make sure you state the measurement’s in next email you can either send measurement’s in metric or Americans measurement’s. I will look forward to your e mail with the required information. Due regards from me and my family,we are looking forward to meeting you soon.

you can either send the lease through email or to my mailing postal
address united kingdom :


name..Dr john Porter
wife name….Nancy Porter
address….33 Clarendon Park, Clumber Avenue.
city………Nottingham
state…..Nottinghamshire
zip code…….NG10 1BZ

cell number+447031959952

—————————————————-

Hey Christopher,
Thanks for the reply.You’ve spoken wisely and I must tell you
that both the price and explanations are ok by me.This clearly shows
how committed you are in renting the place.As I have said earlier that
I am coming to conduct a research on behalf of my company,In this case
my boss is solely responsible for every expenses is going to cost me
to get to the state.All he wants me to do is to get a suitable place
for myself and which I have found with you.Also to provide him the
information to which payment can be made to.As a result of this I need
you to give me your……….
FULL NAME
FULL ADDRESS
CONTACT PHONE
So that I can forward it to my boss for prompt payment prior to
my arrival to secure that your beautiful place and I can’t afford to
miss that place because it’s ok by me.Furthermore,my boss will be
issuing a check in excess.From which you’ll deduct your rent and get
the remaining money to my travel agent who resides in the state via
western union so that necessary documents and ticket can be arranged
for me to get to the place as soon as possible.I will be so much glad
to read from you…I hope to seeing you soon…


Thanks,Sandra
—————————————————-

from Christopher Dickens <>
to Alvin High

date Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 9:03 PM
subject Re: I’M INTERESTED IN YOUR APARTMENT

mailed-by gmail.com


hide details 9:03 PM (11 hours ago)
Reply

Follow up message


Yes? You have questions?
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On Aug 11, 2009, at 20:48, Alvin High wrote:
–
How are you?I want to make inquiry for this apartments.

First of all, I must apologize for taking NO pictures of our drive over the mountain passes. My wife always makes fun of me for taking photographs of scenery with no one in them, so the thought never occurred to me to snap some photos of the drive. But here are someone else’s pictures for your enjoyment!

They are in the process of repaving the roads on the passes, and we kept getting behind semis. So the lack of speed forced us to really enjoy the scenery. If you’ve never driven this road before, it’s an experience that you must do at some point in your life. You need a steady handed driver though; one who won’t be distracted from the scenery. One bad move on this road with no guard rails, and you’ll be tumbling down several hundred feet into river below!

We stopped in Silverton for breakfast at the Cow Palace Cafe. While Silverton is every bit as small a town as Ouray, the valley it resides in is much wider. It’s a funny looking small town. Again, no photos from us, so here is someone else’s from up high looking down into the town. About the only pictures we got of Silverton were inside the Cow Palace, as my daughter Olivia was playing with the camera as I was talking to Grandpa Kennon on the phone.

After breakfast and a quick walk through town (it was slow that morning, as the first Narrow Gauge train had not arrived), we headed on to Durango. We got to Shirena’s house and had lunch (fish tacos!). Later that night we took the girls to the rodeo. They had a great time. Let just say that I was excited for it to end.

The next day was the day of Shirena’s shower at their mom’s house in Farmington, NM. They headed on down, and I met Greg at Carver’s for lunch, and then we went river rafting down the Animas River. It was classified as Class 3 rapids, but I believe there were only two, both lasting no more than 10-20 feet. The rest of the ride was a leisurely tour of Durango from the river. Oh yeah, the most fun part of the trip was when the guide got the boat parked on a rock! It took him and one other guy out of the boat, and the rest of the six of us piled on top of each other on the back bouncing up and down to free up the raft.

After that Greg and I headed into Farmington, where 9 people would stay over at Pruda’s house. The next day was the drive to Taos, NM, and the kick off of the family reunion.

We then headed into a HOT HOT HOT Grand Junction (94 degrees when we arrived!) to stay with Alicia’s Grandma Lugy for the night. Lugy is 87 years old, and one of her daughters, aunt Alice, lives with her. Alicia used to own a restaurant in Flagstaff, AZ, called Jalapeño Lou’s. It was named after my Father-in-law, who died in Pure in a plane crash in 1996.

Alice makes some of the best new Mexican cuisine around! We had a great visit, and the most awesome feast both for dinner that night, and breakfast the next morning. The dinner menu was:

• Red Chile Enchiladas
• Flautas
• Taquitos
• Rice & Beans
• Sopapillas

And for breakfast:

• Green Chile
• Fried Eggs
• Bacon
• Tortillas

Everything was made from scratch, even the sopapillas and rottillas were hand made. The green chile was some of the hottest I’ve had. My wife imports her chile from new Mexico, but her dishes are still not quite as hot as the chile we had at breakfast.

After a great visit, we headed south out of town, where it prompted cooled down past Montrose. We stopped in the town of Ridgeway, CO for lunch, at a restaurant called True Grit, a restaurant that serves “cowboy cuisine” and has John Wayne memorabilia everywhere. We sat on the balcony and had a great view of the San Juans.

After lunch, we headed into Ouray Colorado, and checked into the Ouray Chalet Inn. If you’ve never been to Ouray, it’s one of the great mountain towns. The entire town is at best a half-mile long and five city blocks wide. There’s very little, if any, commercial or “chain” businesses there.

We took a hike up to Cascade Falls with the girls, and they had a blast getting into the mist of the fall, although Kenna didn’t like the noise too much. After throwing rocks into the creek that comes down off the fall, we headed to the hot spring pool. It was already 6pm, and yet the warm water felt great with the cool mountain air.

There were two water slides, and I tried to get Olivia to go on the slide with me, but she wouldn’t. Kenna said she wanted to go, so I took her, and she thought it was fun! She even held her breathe and went under water. Having seen her sister do it, then Olivia got brave and went as well.

After the hot spring, we had dinner, then put the girls to bed. Alicia and I then sat outside and stared at the star while drinking our Canyon Wind wine.

The next morning we would head over the Red Mountain Pass on the Million Dollar Highway into Silverton and eventually into Durango, where we would spend the evening with Alicia’s sister and her husband, Shirena and Clay.

Everything went fairly well in terms of travel. We did have a problem with getting the rental car in Denver, and, anyone who’s been to Denver airport can appreciate this. We had to take a 15 minute shuttle ride to even get to the car rental “town.” Once we got there, it was mass chaos. I was about 8 deep in line, and it took over an hour.

Not anticipating that into our schedule, we just barely made it to the Alpine Inn in Frisco before they closed the front desk at 10:00pm. Beyond that, the trip went very smooth.

The next day was a beautiful, sunny, cool crisp day at 9000 feet. We stopped in at the Butterhorn Bakery & Cafe in downtown Frisco for breakfast. Girls ate well, and had fun at the same time.

That Sunday morning was a breast cancer walk, so the town was jam packed with walkers. The walk was down the walk/bike path that goes to Breckenridge from Frisco.

After breakfast, we drove the 10 minute drive to Breckenridge to check out the town. We were very surprised by all of the damage done by the beetles. There were more dead brown trees on the mountains than green ones. I saw in the local newspaper where Breckenridge had conceded defeat in the battle against the beetles.

In Breckenridge, there wasn’t a whole lot going on, as it was 9am on Sunday morning. But there was an art fair that was in the process of getting setup. We looked around at a few things, but the girls mostly wanted to play at the small playground in the middle of town.

It was a dangerous area though, an “iver” ran down through the town and the rapids were fast and “trong,” so I had to protect my girls.

After snapping a few family photos

We headed back north toward Frisco, but veered off to the east up a mountain to Sapphire Point, and easy family-rated trail that looks over Dillon Reservoir.

After our hike, we headed out on our 3 hour drive to Grand Junction. Coming down through the canyon just east of Glenwood Springs, we saw some rafters having a good time, so at the bottom of the canyon we stopped at the rest stop / camp ground to watch them go by.

Kenna took a few minutes to read up on the bears that inhabit the area.

On the way into Grand Junction we stopped at Canyon Wind Winery and did some tasting, brought a couple bottles, and then arrived at Grandma Lugy’s house around 3:00pm. It was hot in Grand Junction, about 93 degrees!

That concluded Part 1 of our trip. Part two is our visit with Lugy and drive into Ouray Colorado. Look for that post in the next couple days.

I also created an interactive map of our travel route.

Saturday, June 28th

• Drive to Indianapolis, IN
• Fly to Denver, CO via Dallas, TX
• Drive to Frisco, Co

Sunday, June 29th

• Visit Breckenridge, Co
• Drive to Grand Junction, CO

Monday, June 30th

• Drive to Ouray, CO

Tuesday, July 1st

• Drive to Durango, Co

Wednesday, July 2nd

• Drive to Farmington, NM

Thursday, July 3rd

• Drive to Taos, NM

Sunday, July 6th

• Chris
• Drive to Albuquerque, NM
• Fly to Indianapolis, IN
• Drive to Bloomington, IN
• Rest of Family
• Drive to Farmington, NM

Saturday, July 12th

• Rest of Family
• Drive to Albuquerque, NM
• Fly to Indianapolis, IN
• Drive to Bloomington, IN

The chickens are bought in a quantity of 100, from a farming catalog. They are shipped through the post office (yes, the post office will handle farm animals!). It’s ok, it’s Green County. Usually when Tom Jochim is picking up the chickens, there is someone inevitably in the post office trying to mail their mule or pig to their cousin in Kentucky.

The chicks, only a few days old when they arrive, are kept inside (in the garage) until they are about 2 weeks old. During this time, all the kids stop by to see the “cute” chicks while they are still “cute” and fuzzy. The turn into ugly chickens pretty quickly. After a couple weeks, the Great Chicken Migration is performed, and the chicks are transferred to their coup, where they will live their 6 glorious weeks of life.

On Caper day, we usually have about a dozen volunteers, and everyone knows their role. The chickens are sent through a process in which the end result is a clean and well packaged bird. Here is a “bird’s eye view” of the disassembly line:

Here’s how it goes:

First, several chickens are transferred from the coup to the “containment area.”

The butcher block is right next to the containment area. This may seem a little cruel, as the chickens can hear their fellow fowl’s fate but cannot actually see it. The head is severed from the body.

Once the head has been separated from the body, you have to drain the blood. We use milk cartons with the bottom cut out.

Once the blood has drained (and the legs and wings quit twitching), you have to soak the bird in hot water to loosen the feathers. The water should be about 135 to 140 degrees. Soak the bird for 30-45 seconds, until the wing or tail feather pull out fairly easily.

Now here’s the fun part, and the part that makes the process so much easier than how your grandparents used to do it. We have a chicken plucking machine. It has a cylinder that rotates rapidly. On that cylinder, there are several rubber fingers. These fingers are strong enough to knock the feathers off the bird without causing any real damage or bruising. But you do have to be most careful with the extremities, particularly the wings. We usually break a few in the process. It takes some practice to get a feel for it. There are also several conditions that can affect the efficiency of the machine. Last year was rough. The feathers were not coming off easily, and after bruising several birds we had to concede that we would still have to do some plucking by hand at the next station. This year we got lucky. The birds were a week younger than last year, and the feathers came off easily.

Once the chicken comes off the machine, the bird is hung to get any remaining feathers off that can be pulled by hand. The bird is then rinsed, and taken on to the next station.

Next, the feet are cut off.

And then, the birds are cleaned. By cleaned, I do not mean get a bath. This is where the internal organs are extracted. The parts that people like to eat, the livers and gizzards (none for me thanks!) are separated, and all the guts are dropped in buckets. This table requires precision and skill, so we employ a full time knife sharpener, and a surgeon. That’s Dr. Charles McKeen in his scrubs.

Next, a final cleaning inside and out, and any remaining fine feathers are plucked off.

And then off they go to the inside of the house, for quality control inspection and packaging. They are packaged in 2-gallon Ziploc bags, and put on ice in coolers of the volunteers.

When the work is done, all the “remains” are buried in Tom’s garden. They make for some tasty tomatoes next year (hold the salmonella!)

So, that’s it. It’s a hard days work, but we try to have some fun. Couple years ago someone brought some home grown “Chicken Killin’ IPA", this year someone found a festive bittle of wine. @garyvee only gives the wine an 88 on corkd.com, but I thought it was great.

Question and Answer:

Do we save any money on chicken this way? Not really. Total price after feed and all comes to about $5.00+ per bird. But, we know where it came from, and we know it was fresh. Alicia and I get a dozen, and that lasts us a year. We go through one a month, and it feeds the family 2-3 times over. Usually crock pot the bird and have roasted chicken, potatoes, etc., then use the leftovers for burritos, fajitas, etc.

How big do they get? Bigger than your average store bought, they usually average about 5.0 - 5.5 lbs. We had one that was almost 8 pounds one year, looked more like a turkey! The smallest one was this year, 1 lb 10oz. It was picked on by its peers and really lucky it lived as long as it did.

How long does it take to butcher 100 chickens? About 9 hours. Figure about .5 - .75 man hour per bird, we usually process about 15-20 per hour depending on how well the feathers are coming off. You have to change the soaking water about every 25 birds, which halts the system for 30 minutes and we take about a half hour break for lunch.

Do you eat chicken for lunch on Caper Day? NO! Salami, cheese, crackers, fruit, homemade bread, etc.

Chicken Murderer! The birds will kill over and die in a couple more weeks anyway if we don’t butcher them. They are genetically engineered birds, designed to grow rapidly for meat, and their hearts cannot handle their fast growth rate. They will literally have heart attacks if left alive. So we are actually doing them a favor. And… if we get some tasty fajitas in doing so, it’s a winning situation for all!

cmd.