Sustainable Living

*DISCLAIMER:  Do not read if you are easily grossed out.*

We would love to be those people that grow all their own food, get their milk from the goat out back, make their own brews, absolutely never buy store bread, etc.

Let me just say:

We're not there yet.

This summer we acquired a handful of chickens. 

Remember how one of them turned out to be a he-chicken? 

Well, he is a very good crower.  All day long.  And then he made the mistake of attacking Jonathan.  (He has this effect on animals.  Maybe his legs are just too long?)  And we don't really want tiny chicks in our morning breakfast.  I think you see where I'm going with this.

The rooster had to go.

We did some research and came across this very helpful blog on how to butcher a chicken.  It takes you through the whole process step by step.  With pictures.  Very helpful.

The first step is to catch the chicken.  We did not have a large net like the helpful blog suggested and we didn't want our first kill to be in front of the kids.  We just didn't know what would happen exactly.  What did happen was I herded the rooster into the shed with the canoe paddle (it took several attempts because we didn't want to take out the layers in the process and they kept following the rooster right into the shed).  Then, Gard-dawg took him out with the other paddle.  Away from the eyes of the curious, innocent children. 

Next, he took the rooster out and, well, chopped his head off.

It's what the instructions said.

At this point, we could contain the children no longer.  "Is he dead?  Did you kill him, Daddy?"

Their reactions were pretty predictable.



Joe and Trek were thrilled by the gore.

Dylan wanted to follow with his brothers but just not sure about it.

Abby chose not to look.

Jonathan took care of the rest of the cleaning of the rooster by himself.

He gathered all his tools.

Boiling hot water.  Sharp knives. KVMR.

And, that's about all the pictures that I feel need to be shared.

Except this one more.



I'm pretty sure he cut open something the blog people said not to cut because it was awfully smelly and quite possibly have turned my husband into a vegetarian.

So.

Got any vegetarian recipes to send my way?

Oh, and this wasn't just a way to get rid of Red.  The meat is being fried up at guys' night (a very honorable ending for our rooster, Don't you think?)