Day of the chicken

This is how I look after a long hot day processing chickens, working in the garden and relocating some chicks. Wow, let me tell ya it was a hot one today and humid. I got 6 cucumbers, 1 zucchini and a couple banana peppers from the garden today. While I was working out there getting the weeds out or at least some of the weeds out I noticed some of the stuff does not seem to like all the rain we have been getting and a few things are looking like they are starting to rot. Hopefully the Lord blesses us with some sunny days for awhile.

Anyway, what I am wanting to tell you about today is my chickens. We have been raising silver laced wyandottes for a few years now for eggs and we also have been butchering them for meat but they seemed kind of small. Needed about 1 chicken per person eating and I did not think that was a good ratio so we decided to try cornish rock crosses. Man oh man those things are big!! They were only 8 weeks old (I did not want to wait until they got so big that they were suffering from their size) and the 4 of them probably gave me more meat then all the chickens we have processed. We did have a dozen of them but a dog got most of them. Sad tragedy but I haven't seen the dogs since so I think the owner must have penned them up. I am in charge of catching the chickens and prepping them for the freezer while my husband does all of the butchering duties. I can just imagine what I looked like. Some wild and crazy woman running around the chicken pen yelling "get back here you stupid chicken" switched with "come here sweet girl". Neither worked by the way. Anyway after I caught them my husband did the necessary stuff and after he got the skin off I was shocked, it no longer looked like a chicken! It was more like hey there are some drumsticks we can have for dinner tomorrow! You could see each section of meat, it was almost like being at a grocery store and picking out the meat you want except we were in my back yard and we had all the choice cuts of meat. Right now they are in the fridge but I absolutely cannot wait to taste the meat. Maybe I will learn how to make chicken and dumplings, I think hubby would like that.

Have a blessed day everyone!!

~April

shared at http://newlifeonahomestead.com/2013/07/mondays-homestead-barn-hop-118/