Butchering Chickens

Yesterday we got together at Calvin's parents house to butcher the chickens that we've been raising since the middle of February. Calvin said that home grown chicken is so much better tasting than store bought - we'll see I guess. I anticipated the whole experience to be disgusting and wasn't very excited about having to help with the process but figured that there would be at least one job that wouldn't be too gross. As it turned out, the whole thing was not nearly as bad as I thought it might be. The girls were great and played with my nieces all afternoon. They were also fine with watching all aspects of the process and were pretty interested in how it all worked (and both of them slept great last night with no nightmares about chickens). As my sister said, they are definitely little farm girls and are pretty schooled in how the life cycle works - we've got births and deaths frequently around our house. Calvin's parents, aunt, and brother and his wife helped us. We butchered 37 chickens in 5 hours, which I was told was not too bad. Once the feathers were off, the chickens actually just looked like ones from the store. I don't get grossed out by raw meat, so it was fine for me. I even got to practice on how to cut a whole chicken up. After we were all completely done, Calvin asked if we were having chicken for supper. We definitely did not nor are we having it tonight. Maybe tomorrow? We'll have to see.