On Saturday, June 19th I helped Wild Chick Farms with the butchering of 80 chicken, chook, broilers- dinosaur birds with smelly insides. Greg woke me up that morning with a cup of joe delivered to me in my bed. I MAY have hinted to him that this was my preferred method of being roused from slumber, but never did I expect this to happen as visions of chickens danced in my head. What a pleasant way to be woken up. I wish I could get a robot to do that for me everyday. Or just re-program Greg.
Anyways..... we headed up to Redwood Valley for the chicken slaughter. Spirits were high and we listened to some David Allen Coe and Charlie Daniels Band to get into the mood. When we got there, we started rounding up chickens from the chicken tractor and putting them into crates. Now I have heard a lot of chicken noises, squabbles and squawks in my day, and crowing forth from these chickens was a completely new one. It was distinctly as if they were saying haaalp! sorry, nothing can haaalp you now..
The actual slaughter was done by Greg and Matt (of Wild Chick). Ash, Rhonda, Sara and I were inside the mobile processing unit dressing the chickens. After I did a few chickens and my nostrils were filled with the hot funk of chicken guts, post-mortum chicken poo seemed to keep gushing forth and I had knicked a bile gland or two- a little humor was necessary. I don't think it was dishonorable of their life to move the wings and legs around in a little jiggity jig as we listened to music. I don't know if Greg got to this point as his job was decidedly more gruesome. He was wrestling flapping chickens into the killing cones as they screamed for halp, slitting their throats and letting the chickens bleed into buckets. Every time I looked out the window at him, he seemed to have a horrified grimace on his face. When he offered to switch jobs, I politely declined.
We had a lovely lunch, and our efforts were rewarded with a chicken, homemade honey, goat cheese and a lingering smell of chicken innards on our hands and clothes.
I am not going to lie, it was pretty hardcore processing that many birds at once. And I grew up helping to clean countless amounts of birds and fish. I wonder what it is like a Tyson plant. Besides having a completely nauseating smell, (which would make the smell I experienced to be a gnat fart in comparison) I really can't imagine how things would work. Do humans even touch the birds? I haven't eaten a factory farmed chicken in over ten years, but I can bet you all the chicken hearts in the world, that they couldn't compare to the taste, tenderness, and happiness of the California chickens.
I want to say I have a new appreciation of where my food comes from, but I think because I grew up hunting and having that intimate knowledge that food doesn't just come from the grocery store- it wasn't that sort of experience for me. And I don't necessarily think that every meat eater should have had their hand inside a chicken cavity groping around for it's trachea to pull our the crop... You should just know that it is what happens when you eat meat... an animal was killed that you are now eating. I care about the life of the animals I eat. I want them to have been living a life where they could express their animal selves. There is no chicken in the world that is programmed to be shoved 50 deep in a crate, crapping on the head of its' kin, and never tasting a fat juicy worm or bug pulled out of the ground.
If I were to die and come back into this world a chicken, I would first want to be a free range Kauai feral chicken, but if I were to be a meat bird I would hope to be a pasture-raised chicken living out my numbered days in Northern California.
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