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Well now. There is just no part of that process that isn’t nasty. Last month I interviewed Richard Morris, who said, “One thing I definitely want to do next year is to buy a live chicken and go through the whole process from the back yard to the kitchen table. I think it would be very educational for all of us.” . Let me say, Richard my friend? There is no more effective way to communicate the high cost of food than a project like this. To call it “educational” would be a huge understatement.

Hercules was a mighty rooster. A big bird who felt his freedom to his bones, who loves to shake out his long, blond mane and crow for all he was worth, one leg in the air and beak turned towards heaven. If I’d let him, he would have loved to “be the boss” around here. He had the dog spurred into submission, the kids knew to keep their distance, and my poor three red hens were constantly worked over. In his pen it was easier to turn a blind eye to the aggression, feed him, enjoy his wake up call, and go on with things.

That is, at least, until it got personal. Pick on momma? Bite the hand that feeds you? You’re outta here Mister.

Yes well. Easier said than done.

Hercules doesn’t like to be caught. When he free roamed he often would not head back to the coop until dusk, right on the edge of dark, and only when it was pitch black would he let anyone handle him enough to lock him back in. So we knew the “deed” needed to be done at night. We were justifiably nervous at the thought of trying to butcher a chicken under the stars; it’s hard to see what one is doing!

So we began at dusk, hoping he’d be in a compliant mood. Have you seen the scene in Shrek when the villagers head to the ogre’s swamp with rakes and torches and the like, ready to cast him out? That’s kind of what this group looked like, each of us holding a rake or flashlight, headed up the hill in mud boots, ready to round him up. The drama around catching one lone rooster was astounding! One of us would try to edge him near the others while they blocked him. At one point David tried to lasso him. As the cold wind blew in and the temperature dropped, a few expletives were uttered at the frustrations of this stubborn boy who knew he had the advantage.

We went in for dinner. It was over plates of steaming chuck steak, rice and veggies that Andrew came up with his idea to use a towel. It went like this: I’d block him, David would corner him, and Andrew would sneak up behind him and throw the towel over his head. Three tries and it worked. They were able to slow him down enough to get a rope around his neck and another around his feet.

Hindsight: at this point, one should just break the chicken’s neck. But, having read many, many pages of instructions yesterday in preparation, we thought we ought to stick with our plan of a head-chop slaughter. So off to the chopping block we went.

Andrew has the feet/body job. He’d been warned not to let go after the cut because the body would still flail around. David had the head end and they pulled the now-quite-compliant bird and laid him down on the block. Immediately we noticed a problem: Hercules’s “mane”, those long, blond feathers, were in the way of the chop. They could be lifted but the bottom side provided a cushion that made a clean cut very difficult. Andrew was saying, “okay, okay,…..I’m ready Dad. Oh! (he was cringing) Just do it. Thank you Hercules for being a good chicken.” David was hesitating, knowing (and having had read it at the Urban Agrarian) that he did not want to have to chop twice.

Trying not to be as gruesome in words as the sight was, the first chop only got half. The bird flopped around. Andrew screamed, though faithfully not taking his hands off the bird. David chopped again and it was done.

We had a bucket near the chopping block to let him “bleed out”. I couldn’t remember how long this was supposed to take. There was already a good amount of blood on the block, the ground, the men’s pants. We hung the bird from his feet on the clothesline over the bucket and waited for the water to boil on the stove. I had my big water bath canner filled and nearly there at the time of the chopping.

There wasn’t much blood in the bucket. After a few minutes with no drips I went and brought out the pot of boiling water.

Hindsight: get an outdoor propane burner. Do as much as possible in one place.

We put the body into the pot and brought it back inside to boil for a few minutes. At this point I wanted the book back out again. I was completely blank on how long to scald him.

The boys were flustered and it took several minutes to find this out. And, when we finally read, “30 seconds ought to do it”, we knew we’d likely begun to cook the bird……

Hindsight: there is no way to read and butcher at the same time. There is a great chance that all the reading one does prior will vanish from memory at the critical time. To all those wanting to give this a try: have someone there who KNOWS what they are doing and has done this before.

Andrew and I took him back outside to pluck the feathers. One has to kind of “rip” them out in the direction they grew. It’s not hard and they came out surprisingly easy. Andrew said, “he feels like a rubber chicken from the store mom!” And, to our comfort, at this point he starts to look more like a regular roaster from the store. Then I chopped off his feet.

As soon as he was cleaned off we brought him inside to run under cold water.

Hindsight: when one has a small kitchen like mine, do not have any of the dinner dishes around, waiting to be washed. You will need SPACE.

Okay, so this is the part where the innards have to be removed. I’d read and read and somehow imagined that it would be similar to those roasters from the store. You know the kind with the little paper pouches of organs inside? Mine are always still a bit frozen in the middle and I have to put my hand in and give a good tug but then “whoosh” and their out. I figured it would be warmer inside (from life and the scalding) but that the tug and removal would be similar.

Um. No. Not even close.

My rooster was not a hormone-hyped store bird with a big breast. He was long, with long legs, and in a slipper wet sink. I had a hard time keeping the back/breast straight. Some of our books said to cut the neck away but they didn’t say how far down. It seemed I couldn’t get it far enough to get a really good hole for the neck “cavity” to allow for organ removal. And then there were these two gross tube sticking out too: the esophagus and the trachea. Some books said to remove the “oil gland” above the tail and some did not. All said to not cut through the rectum.

Hindsight: yes, real chickens have a rectum and if they haven’t gone to the bathroom, there will be something “else” nearby. It won’t take reading many warnings to make you really nervous about cutting anything down there for fear the wrong thing will be cut. And, my knives were not as sharp as needed.

So I managed to wrangle enough neck out, by now realizing that none of my cuts were going to be as quick as “ cut and remove”. I was wrestling this wet bird and getting more and more apprehensive about sticking my hands inside!

But NOBODY said ANYTHING about a full stomach. My Hercules had free roamed all day having a feast in my yard. The stomach was bulging and full and the most obvious organ to remove first. I’d cut into it by mistake, which meant, I had to remove the contents of the stomach before actually getting the whole organ out.

Hindsight: can latex gloves be used next time and still have any kind of grip?

Stomach gone, chest cut made, time to stick my index and middle fingers in down through the neck to loosen the organs. Here where my idea of “tug and remove” was shattered. Everything was attached. It was sloshy. Think chest cavity scene on ER. Fingers go in, probe around, seeing mentally rather than with eyes. The body is long and goes less than half way down. And this is all supposed to be pulled out the tail end. Our tail hole didn’t seem quite large enough…..

I grabbed an intestine. Pull, pull, pull. It kept coming. Celia thought I was pulling a snake. It makes little “popping”, puckering noises as it comes out. It’s warm.

At this point, MIND OVER MATTER is a means of survival. You are completely and utterly committed to just getting through this project. All romantic ideas of “growing your own” have flown out the window dahling. You are pulling a chicken’s intestines out in your sink and it is nothing but nasty.

And once you get them out, the words in the book say, “and the organs will follow the crop.”

“What the hell is the crop??!?” I yelled. I had slimy intestines, a few bright red clumps of something else and the organs weren’t budging. Andrew was taking pictures (most of which didn’t turn out), David was frantically looking for better info (he had much pity for me by now, being organ-squeamish himself), and Rowan was going around crowing, “rooo rooo roooooooo” .

Any real farmer would laugh at the utter pathos. City people are thinking, “I’ll get mine from the store thanks”. And I desperately wanted to talk to one of my friends who’d done this before. But there is no where to go but onward.

I decided to cut the rectum out and anything attached to it, hang what the books say. That gone, I felt a little freer about digging around in there. Eventually it all came out: heart, gizzards, liver, kidneys. Into the bloody feather pot it all went. I was past romantic ideas of parts for luscious stocks. Eventually the cats got the organs and the dog got the neck. The rest went in the trash.

Hindsight: lots of running water is your friend. Once gutted, the bird from here looks like any ordinary stuffing bird. I should have just trussed him at this point for roast chicken today. But I was out of onions and I always use thick wedges of onion for a roasting bed. So I stuck to my original plan.

Ha. I’m no butcher. And remember, my knives were not as sharp as they should have been. I got the legs off and the thighs pretty easily. But that breast/back problem persisted. The breast meat was detaching from the bone and I couldn’t find where to cut the two breast halves apart. No pretty little pieces like the cellophane packages at the store were going to be a part of this project!!! Eventually I got legs, thighs, and two breasts (one with a bone, one without) into the baking dish to coat with buttermilk. The wings and remnants of the breast bone and back all went into a stock pot with carrots and celery.

By the time we bleached and cleaned the kitchen it was late. We were more exhausted than we’ve been in a long time, similar only to the full-spectrum drain we’ve felt after a major fight of some kind. I was humbled at the thought of my friend Anna who did her first while she had infant twins and all kind of other stuff going on. And my friend Cheryl who did over 20 her first time, all meat birds. I’m not in any hurry to do this again, yet when I take on more birds, it will be with full knowledge of what I’m committing to. There was no real way to learn that but by the doing.

Food is indeed expensive. To Hercules, who is now soaking in milk to be fried tomorrow. To our children, who learned that grocery store offerings are deceptively easy. To us, who learned that books romanticize to inspire and reality is harsh. Doable but harsh.

We’ve been reading Crunchy Cons in bed at night, an inspirational manifesto that has helped us realize that we aren’t so odd after all, and that there is kind of honest conservatism out there we can openly support (because the visible mainstream ain’t it honey). If there was a “crunchy con” badge out there, I feel like I earned it last night. It was some kind of trial by fire (or guts as it were) to see if we really believed what we say we do, and I feel like I passed.

This morning there is a wonderfully aromatic pot of stock simmering on the stove. I’ll season the pieces in the fridge and see how tough or tender a free-roaming 7 month old chicken will be. There will be a big bowl of mashed potatoes alongside for my boy who bravely helped and gravy for his daddy who did the part I never could.

“No more complaining about the cost of food from me,” said The Little Red Hen.

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