Roast chicken

I used to be really into dating bad boys.  It wasn't because I liked the danger or was trying to piss off my mother, it was because I liked being considered the nice one in the relationship.  I wanted people to say, "JoAnn is really nice, why is she with that guy?" So, fifteen years ago, when I started dating a 30 year old guy who still got into the occasional fist fight with strangers who pissed him off, I figured I was a shoe in for the role of  "nice one" in the relationship. Unfortunately, recent events have forced me to admit something I have known for a very long time:  The husband is really much nicer than I.

He is the one who captures raccoons and groundhogs in the Have a Heart trap so he can drive them to the middle of nowhere and release them, while I would probably opt for the guillotine style trap.  He is the one who saved a baby rabbit from the jaws of our cat and then pleaded with me to take it back to New York City with us in the van the cat and dog were also going to be in.  I refused and the next weekend the cat finished the job.  He is also the one who tried to nurse a baby bird back to health who had fallen out of its nest and the one who sat by Itty Bitty Kitty's side and played midwife as she birthed her kittens.

While one of my favorite sports is sarcasm laced gossip, the husband rarely has an unkind word to say about anyone.  If you cut him off in traffic however, he will get out of the car and pour a soda down your windshield as he unleashes some colorful expletives.

Given the husband's kindness and love of little animals, I was really surprised by the zeal he had for raising meat birds, but I figured he was a committed homesteader now and ready to butcher his own food.  The fact that he doesn't even like to carve the Thanksgiving Turkey probably should have made me doubt his resolve for cutting a chicken's head off and pulling out its feathers.

Last Friday was the big day.  We were all set to put 15 birds into our freezer.  Two days before the event, we separated the meat birds from the layers and after we pardoned a few of the favorolle hens because they were really sweet so we deemed them too small, we were down to 12. Most of the chickens destined for the roasting pan were roosters.  Note to anyone who wants to raise their own meat birds: choose roosters.  They are bigger and they are such little fuckers that you will be dying to slit there throats.

My mother-in-law thankfully arrived at high noon on Friday.  The husband had his killing cone (a metal cone you nail to a tree which you place the chicken in so that only it's head is sticking out.)  This gives the chicken some comfort and makes for a lot less blood splatter since chickens really can run around with their heads cut off.  My MIL also brought her cone since she had recently butchered some of her own meat birds and she quickly got to work slitting the throat of the first one.  The husband tried to do the second one and got, shall we say, a little squeamish, so his mom offed that one too. The two of them then got to work scalding the birds to make the feathers come out easier.

The birds were supposed to go into the chicken plucker contraption so we wouldn't have to pluck by hand but there was a glitch in the design so this group needed to be plucked by hand.  After the first couple of birds, I could tell the husband wasn't going to last.  He took over the job of boiling water and I joined his mom in the plucking and gutting.

I was kind of surprised by how unfazed I was by the whole process.  The feathers were soft and pulled out easily after the bird was scalded. Removing the innards reminded me of junior high school biology class when I had to dissect a rat.  It was fascinating seeing its heart and intestines.  I was starting to worry my lack of empathy for these chickens I had just fed the day before, meant I may have sociopathic tendencies.

By the time I cleaned and bagged the birds for the freezer and prepared the three I roasted for dinner that night, the chickens just looked like the chickens I buy in the grocery store, except with longer legs and much skinnier bodies.  I do NOT want to know what Purdue does to get its chickens to grow two pound breasts.

That night there were seven of us for dinner including my five, a friend of the boys and my mother-in-law. We all sat down and gave thanks for the meal we were about to eat and for the chickens that gave their lives to sustain us.  (Obviously I had this speech all written in my head months before.)  I really thought I would tear up or get a weird feeling in my stomach the first time I ate an animal I raised for meat, but again, I was feeling slightly sociopathic.  Prince, James Dean and my mother-in-law all dug in despite the the husband's declaration that he didn't like it.  Scrappy and our friend were a little reluctant to eat the birds they had just helped carry to the killing cones.

I felt a little disappointed that we didn't all have a spiritual kumbaya moment when we tasted our first Farmette chicken, but as I looked around the table and saw three generations enjoying each other's company and experiencing this newest family adventure, I realized this was a popcorn bowl moment none of us will soon forget.

the nice one in our relationship.