Last week I did something I said I would never do. I keep waiting for the world to be different because of it, but so far, not much has changed.
The thing I did was pluck a chicken. Truth be told, I only plucked a little bit of the chicken, but it still involved using my fingers to pull feathers out of a freshly-killed carcass and I was starting to get the hang of it just before I got too wigged and Earl had to finish up. I actually would have been fine, except that Earl was going to leave to go to the fire department meeting and I wasn't going to let him go until the chicken was in the pot. To my way of thinking, there is a big difference between plucking a chicken with Earl, who knows how to do it, right there, and me, the only adult on the farm, plucking a chicken at the sink with four little kids running around at my feet. Like drinking, plucking is different if you have to do it alone.
We were plucking this chicken because my mom was sick and I said I wished I had a chicken on hand so I could make her soup. And Earl said, "Want me to kill you a chicken?" We had just been talking about the old Rhode Island Reds being essentially worthless, non-egg-laying, grain-devouring parasites, and it seemed like a good idea. The kids were intrigued and jumped in their boots to watch. Half an hour later, they appeared with a chicken.
I didn't expect it to look like a supermarket chicken, but I have to admit I was really hoping it would. No such luck. The wings, Earl decided, were too scrawny to be worth plucking and still had feathers on them. The rest of the body was mostly bald and dimply, but there were about a hundred stubby little feathers still left on the bird. We set the carcass in a clean sink, washed up and had supper. When I was done eating, I got up to try to finish the plucking so I could put the soup on.
We were plucking this chicken because my mom was sick and I said I wished I had a chicken on hand so I could make her soup. And Earl said, "Want me to kill you a chicken?" We had just been talking about the old Rhode Island Reds being essentially worthless, non-egg-laying, grain-devouring parasites, and it seemed like a good idea. The kids were intrigued and jumped in their boots to watch. Half an hour later, they appeared with a chicken.
I didn't expect it to look like a supermarket chicken, but I have to admit I was really hoping it would. No such luck. The wings, Earl decided, were too scrawny to be worth plucking and still had feathers on them. The rest of the body was mostly bald and dimply, but there were about a hundred stubby little feathers still left on the bird. We set the carcass in a clean sink, washed up and had supper. When I was done eating, I got up to try to finish the plucking so I could put the soup on.
I cut off the wings, no problem, but then there were feathery chicken wings in the sink. I didn't want to touch them, so I took a small paper bag, turned it inside out, and scooped them up and folded the bag over them. In a nanosecond, I was out at the furnace, tossing in the bag. A few minutes later, the woodsmoke took on the faint smell of fried chicken. This is one of the beauties of running a wood furnace (for hot water) year round.
Then it was time for the actual plucking.
The stubby feathers were surprisingly hard to pull out. I twisted, squeezed and jerked and made some progress, but I had to motivate myself with the Little House on the Prairie Example. Ma Ingalls would never have scrinched up her nose at the thought of plucking a feather-bed filling, fresh protein source. Mostly, though, I thought of how I'm really glad there are machines that can do this, one of which we will be borrowing for the Big Chicken Harvest that's coming up in a few weeks.
I have never seen one of these machines in person, but I understand that there is a drum and there are rubber fingers and one holds the bird by the legs and maybe tips a bit this way and that and the bird is bald in about a minute, less with practice. Sort of like swirling cotton candy, but with the reverse effect. Apparently, the bird must first be dipped in 145 degree water, which miraculously makes bird skin grow indifferent to its feathers. Then the tub does its thing, you chop off the legs, and we're in my comfort zone--supermarket frying bird.
The machine we will borrow, from our dear friends and personal poultry heros, Michael and Margaret, is called the Feathermaster Pro and I have just learned that one does not hold onto the chicken's legs when plucking with this model. One simply tosses in the dead bird, roulette ball style, and after some bumping with the rubber fingers, one is able to pause the machine and fish out a bald chicken. Out there on the market, I hear, are also the Whizbang Plucker and a unit called, no joke, The Mother Plucker. (Mother Pluckers, incidentally, is also the name of a group of middle-aged women harpists in Texas.)
Well, that's really all there is to this story. I made the soup and sent it to my mom and she was feeling so much better that she went out for Chinese food instead, which I'll take any day. Meanwhile, I have crossed a line. I can't say anymore, when describing how farm life is for me, that I happily milk the cows, can drive a tractor in a pinch, but that it's not like I'm plucking chickens or anything.
The stubby feathers were surprisingly hard to pull out. I twisted, squeezed and jerked and made some progress, but I had to motivate myself with the Little House on the Prairie Example. Ma Ingalls would never have scrinched up her nose at the thought of plucking a feather-bed filling, fresh protein source. Mostly, though, I thought of how I'm really glad there are machines that can do this, one of which we will be borrowing for the Big Chicken Harvest that's coming up in a few weeks.
I have never seen one of these machines in person, but I understand that there is a drum and there are rubber fingers and one holds the bird by the legs and maybe tips a bit this way and that and the bird is bald in about a minute, less with practice. Sort of like swirling cotton candy, but with the reverse effect. Apparently, the bird must first be dipped in 145 degree water, which miraculously makes bird skin grow indifferent to its feathers. Then the tub does its thing, you chop off the legs, and we're in my comfort zone--supermarket frying bird.
The machine we will borrow, from our dear friends and personal poultry heros, Michael and Margaret, is called the Feathermaster Pro and I have just learned that one does not hold onto the chicken's legs when plucking with this model. One simply tosses in the dead bird, roulette ball style, and after some bumping with the rubber fingers, one is able to pause the machine and fish out a bald chicken. Out there on the market, I hear, are also the Whizbang Plucker and a unit called, no joke, The Mother Plucker. (Mother Pluckers, incidentally, is also the name of a group of middle-aged women harpists in Texas.)
Well, that's really all there is to this story. I made the soup and sent it to my mom and she was feeling so much better that she went out for Chinese food instead, which I'll take any day. Meanwhile, I have crossed a line. I can't say anymore, when describing how farm life is for me, that I happily milk the cows, can drive a tractor in a pinch, but that it's not like I'm plucking chickens or anything.
I've been expecting a min-van, or maybe a crew-cab pickup to pull into the dooryard and a small flock of ladies in calico dresses or overalls to get out and give me my membership materials. A few years ago, I probably would have made my way out the back door screaming, but today, if they show up, I think I might ask them for advice on those hard-to-pluck pin feathers.
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