Our Family's Journey Through Time
They say that speaking through your traumas can help to minimize the effects of said trauma, so let's talk about chickens.
I have to give credit where it's due. Rollan always had a tendency to help out where ever he saw a need. After purchasing the farm around 1975, his focus turned to making sure
everybody had full freezers. 
His first livestock was Beefalo and Limosin cattle and he was always generous when processing the animals. Our freezers were well stocked with beef.
Never one to stop at just one option, and heaven forbid if he found a deal to boot! Well he came across chicken feed that offered free chicks when purchasing so many pounds. Memory does not allow me to give you the exact formula, but he ended up with somewhere around 150 chicks with the feed he purchased. I am also a little fuzzy on timeframe, but I do know that a full round of seasons turned over before said chickens were prounounced ready to process.
Not being a farmer myself, I thought that chickens were generally processed under a year old, but dad grew up on a farm, seemed such an authority on so many things, so we followed his lead. He kept saying that the breasts had not filled out and that was what he was waiting on. It is my humble opinion that the breast never did fill out, but we ended up with the tallest chickens you've probably ever seen. I don't know if chicken races are a thing, but I bet they could have won them all hands down. These were some LONG legged birds.
By the time the chickens were deemed ready, we still have over 100 of the things and on a bright clear morning, we assembled our team and prepared.
Oddly enough I can't remember where dad was or what his role in all this was, but I know that Dennis and his brother-in-law, Buddy, volunteered for the gory end of the processing procedure. They set up on the farm outside the chicken yard. They were to dispatch, gut, and roughly de-feather each bird before bringing it to the house where mom (Marilyn), Barbara (Dennis's wife), me (Cheryl), and Terry were waiting to finish de-feathering, cutting, and packaging the birds for the freezer.
This was my first experience in the processing of chickens, and while I had an inkling of what was to be done, I apparently had very limited knowledge of timing, processing, and the work involved. The house crew, settled in to wait on the first batch of chickens, conversation flowing back and forth like long lost relatives just finding each other again. It occured to us that the amount of time passed should have been enough to get a first batch up to the house. Apparently, the Jones efficiency was in full force down on the farm and by the time the first batch showed up it was hauled to the house in a large black trash bag stuffed full of naked chickens.
Mom and Barbara were set up to take each chicken, remove any remaining feathers, finish cleaning the bird and the pass it to me where I would cut it into pieces and wrap it for the freezer. It was a beautiful spring day, everyone was in good spirits, and we were ready to get down to work. The first issue arose when we realized that apparently quite a few of the chickens had gone through their yearly molt and as it was spring, they had more pin feathers than they would normally. Mom and Barbara worked diligently as I waited patiently for my first batch to get started.
It was slow going trying to get all the very stubborn pin feathers removed. There were a lot of frustrated noises coming from the kitchen. I just put my head down and started piecing the birds out into family-style packs. Everyone was hard at work at their appointed stations. Then came the next batch.
Not even half way through the first bag, the second full bag of chickens arrived. Obviously, the dispatching of the chickens was way more efficient than the processing of the chickens. Struggling to keep up with the farm crew, we re-doubled our efforts as the levels of frustration grew.
It was somewhere around here, with a bag and a half of chicken bodies lounging in the kitchen that we realized that the kitchen crew was so slow that the birds were drying out waiting on us to get to them. Well this was a dilema for sure! What to do, what to do. How about we fill the bathtub up and soak them in there until we can get caught up!. Great idea, huh? So we had chickens all over the kitchen in various stages of undressed, wet chickens chillin' in the bathtub, leaving a trail of chicken water from the bathroom to the kitchen every time we went to get more to process, and the farm crew kept bringing more.
The biggest problem was the pin feathers. Because of the time of year there were more than usual and they just Would. Not. Relaease. It was to the point that the birds would be unedible with the amount of pin feathers left in the skin and we were falling farther and farther behind.
In an effort to regain the Jones efficiency for the kitchen crew, it was decided that the most prudent thing to do was to skin the chickens and process them that way. It was quicker, although now we also had piles of skin in the discard pile. The kitchen was becoming over-run.
Time, as is usual when you're having the time of your life, passed as we struggled on, not wanting to waste the birds or all our hard work. (Note the understated word "hard") The kitchen crew struggled on, heads down, hands busy, frustration mounting. We found out later that over with the farm crew, Buddy was facinated watching the birds run around after their heads were removed. I've already said I'm not a farmer, but it was explained to me that you needed to let them bleed out for a better end product. What do I know? Luckily it was just the family because Buddy ended up looking like he had been the main character in a horror film.
I'm sure you will be delighted to know that this process finally came to an end. The bathtub was emptied, the chickens were cut and wrapped and everybody went home with a healthy share of the bounty for their freezer.
So, chicken anyone? We have a full freezer, let's not waste all this hard work. I thawed, prepared, and served the chicken. I was looking forward to dinner as it would seem that anything that cost that much effort was going to be all the more delicious. The lesson I learned from this is that that is not always the case. When I tell you the chicken was unedible, even our dog didn't want it. It was very tough and had an off flavor that I can't describe (or maybe, thankfully, forgot). We had no idea what to do with a freezer full of chicken that you couldn't eat. That the dog turned her nose up to.
Over the course of time, as it is in families, we would visit with mom and dad and mom would prepare a lovely dinner for all of us to enjoy. Every time we went over, dad would not so subtly let us know that they still had chicken in the freezer in case we had already eaten all of ours, and that we were welcome to take some home. Well if his chickens were anything like my chickens, of course his freezer was still full. The thing that I didn't understand is how from the same batch, their chickens were much better tasting than ours were. When I asked mom, she said no they were'nt, she bought the chicken she served for dinner from the grocery store, she just didn't tell dad. I'm not sure he ever knew just how awful the chickens turn out.
I'd like to wrap this story up with the final outcome of the pounds and pounds of chicken that was spread over three families, but I really have no idea what finally happened. I know we were all kinda hoping for a power outage to give us an excuse to have to clean the freezers but I don't think that happened either.
Is there a moral to this story? Probably not. Now-a-days you can ask Google when to process chickens and that seems a safer option in my opinion. Or just don't do it. Be like mom and peruse the meat aisle of you local grocery for a wonderful home cooked dinner that everyone will enjoy.
by Cheryl Cash after Barbara brought it up during Mother's Day 2024
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