More chickens and corn and dogs and work and stuf

10 more chickens met their doom last night. We're getting more efficient at this. Sunday we "harvested" 24 of our Cornish Cross meat birds between 10:00 and 7:00. Wednesday we did in 10 chickens in a little over two hours after work. We started by going to the grocery store for ice and some groceries. We got some sandwiches as we didn't feel like we'd be wanting to cook after "taking care of" the chickens. We were right. While Kristi brought out the hot water and fastened the feed bags that we use for collecting feathers and offal, I collected a couple of chickens from the barn, tied on our fancy footnooses and hung the birds over a couple of buckets. I promptly set the birds to bleeding out. This takes a few minutes and I could help Kristi get the ice in the buckets and coolers, filling up clean water dunking buckets, getting my eviscerate tray and knives etc. We got to it in ernest just as the thunder started. Kristi kept saying "it isn't going to rain". I don't know if she really has a sense about these things or if she just makes it up but she was more or less right. It only rained a little and not enough to soak our clothing. So now we're in production. Kristi dunks the now dead bird in the hot water for half a minute and then we commence plucking. I help her pluck until the first bird is feather free, then I start "cleaning out" the chicken. Once the innards are gone the bird is cleaned up and put on ice. I also culled the defective bird that I should have done 2 months ago. Live and learn. This chicken had a bad spinal curvature and could only walk in counterclockwise circles. It would have been better off if I had killed it and not wasted the feed. So now we have 6 birds left to process, but not tonight. Tonight's fun will be a final rinse and then vacuum packing and freezing.
Also on tonight's agenda is taking Barbecue, the dog to the vets. She is going to be celebrating her 6 month birthday by getting spayed. No more stray males hanging around like the last 2 weeks. We'll water the plants that need it, walk around and look at our fruit trees and if there's time, I'll mow the backyard as the weeds are almost knee high.
In other news, the corn is up! Hundreds of little corn plants are up as high as and inch and a half already. We planted them a week ago with the help of Kristi's seeder. This is a gadget that has 2 wheels and a seed holder. It makes a small furrow in tilled soil, drops a seed every so many inches, covers the seed with dirt and marks the next row as a guide. Nice tool. If we'd had to do it with a hoe it would have taken hours. Once the plants have grown a little more and the rows are clearly defined I'll put down soaker hoses for more efficient watering.
This weekend will be a vegetable intensive one. We have more tomatoes, peppers, watermelons, potatoes, squash and beans to get in the ground. Many are too big in the greenhouse already. So it will be a tilling and crawling around on our knees kind of weekend. This is what we signed up for in living here and we can hardly wait. Weird huh?