Little Honey Homestead: Memorial Weekend: Meaties and camping

Making Chicken Dinner: We wanted to process our Red Ranger meaties last Saturday but it got pushed back a week so we ended up with 12 week 5 day old chickens doing all 8 on the 23rd . The biggest two were 4 lb 10 oz and the smallest was 3 lb 8 oz. We used about 350 lb of food for all 24 chickens so its hard to say how much the meaties ate, but I'm gonna estimate they ate about 60% even though there were only 8 of them in the end. We got roughly 31.8 lb of meat - not counting the little I saved for making stock. It ended up costing us about $4.03 per pound for our chickens including bedding and cost of the chicks. I'm not counting housing costs since we had to make the coop for the layers anyways.

Nate making a killing cone out of tin that came with the farm

Next time I would really like to have a chicken tractor or at least separate coop so we can move them outside earlier - I was too worried to move the layers out early with the broilers this time. I would also get them mid March or early April so it will be warmer and they can have more time to free range. Fall seems like a good time too because the garden will be producing and we can supplement their feed more with home grown veggies.

First chicken in the cone

Overall it was pretty incredible to learn how to turn a home raised animal into what looks like a store bought chicken ready for dinner. The hardest part for me was taking the life of the chicken. Originally I thought I would like eviscerating least, but I was only able to kill one chicken then moved on to other jobs. Nate was the ringleader of the day, showing us all how to do it despite the fact this was his first time too. He did most of the killing and eviscerating but we all learned all the jobs and rotated a bit. I mostly caught the chickens and put them in the cone and helped with the plucking.

Nate and his plucker

Nate made our plucker out of an old ball bucket, an old circular saw for the motor, some rubber hose and a couple home made pulleys. He wants to do some adjusting, including a new motor since this one didn't last very long. I'm so glad I married a handyman!

Our day went like this: start the first chicken around noon and finish with a bird in the cooler one hour later, the second one was about 1/2 hour and the third and fourth pretty quick after. Then the plucker started getting testy and Nate went to build the little drill powered plucker. After plucking the 5th chicken for about 30 minutes and it looking a lot worse than the bucket plucked one we waited til the drill was ready.

making the bird look neat by tucking in the legs

plucker in action - it's amazing how well it plucked the chickens!

The drill plucker had it's own issues but it did help supplement after the bucket plucker pooped out. I feel for everyone who's ever had to pluck a chicken by hand, very tedious and we had 3 people pitching in.

Chels getting ready to use the drill plucker

Nate and Sam working out the kinks

The last 4 birds took forever but we finally finished with them all in the fridge "resting" at 8 pm. It was so nice of Sam and Chelsea to come and help. Chelsea was here for the week helping Em get ready for her little baby girl and came up Saturday while Em was at work.

Learning how to get the guts out - turns out we all missed the lungs so Nate had to go back in last night before freezing and get them out. Guess we'll know for next time!

Chels getting her chicken foot

cleaning the insides

Sam putting the finished birds in the clean cooler ready for drying, weighing and bagging

We put them in gallon zip lock freezer bags because I couldn't find the site I had been referring to when I learned you should let them sit for 24-48 hours in the fridge before freezing. Not sure if they should have been bagged or what for that time. But we let them sit all of Sunday and then froze them after sectioning 4 of them and leaving the other 4 whole Monday night. I'm gonna make the first one for dinner tomorrow, I can't wait!!

Camping: We went up Sunday morning to Payson near the same spot as last year. I liked this spot even better and everyone had a good time. Other than using the woods as a toilet it was a great way to spend the weekend.

Playing in the forest

Blain found every tool we brought and used them as shields or swords

Theron brought his sling shot and we all took turns trying to hit a tree - I can't believe I didn't bring my bow!

We put 2 hammocks up and the little ones spent lots of playtime in them

Cute Em 34 weeks pregnant!

Avenlea was such a good baby. She had a pretty rough night but that's to be expected for her first camping trip. She got to spend lots of time bonding with Aunt Chelsea and giving us all cute smiles

Marie howling like a coyote

Hiking the Grotto: We hiked the grotto again because it is such a nice hike for little kids and so pretty along the way and the waterfall is awesome at the end.