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so we made it through today too. yesterday was the turkey processing, right, where we converted live turkeys into dead turkeys. today was turkey packaging, which is self-explanatory, and I had done half of in advance in a terrible rush in precarious and exhausting conditions yesterday, so it went well. And then it was Turkey Pickup, when we convert the dead turkeys into money.
During packaging, I watched Farmkid, who had like six tantrums, and then the last one she was FREAKING OUT because she wanted to dress up in cat-themed clothes but I wouldn’t let her have just tights on in the 33-degree pouring rain, she had to wear pants, and she was in full-on mid-scream-sob about how she didn’t have any cat pants when suddenly, with tears streaming, she stopped and said “Oh wait I have kitty jeans” and then was all sunshine.
For real. She put them on, and then was sweet and cheerful and agreeable and totally forgot she’d ever been mad at me, we were all fine. I actually had earlier let her cry herself out and when I came upstairs she’d slammed her bedroom door shut. Well there’s a weird protruding latch on it, which is just at forehead level for her at present, and her father “fixed” it after she whacked her head on it by putting a large thick piece of cardboard over it and labeling it “[Farmkid]’s Head De-Bonker” and so when she slammed the door it had gone flying off. So I opened the door, noticed it was missing, and before she could scream at me, said “Oh no the Head De-Bonker! Where is it??!?!” and we urgently had to search the room to find it and replace it, and she forgot she was going to shriek at me. So anyway. Then there was a meltdown over the outfit, but it ended. After the recollection of the kitty jeans we had no more disagreements, which was weird but I’ll take it. And after a few hours of following her around, I asked if she wanted to keep reading her book, and she got excited about it and then read for like. Two hours.
I got out to the barn just in time to see the very last four turkeys get packaged. I helped precisely 0 with this. Which was fine.
After lunch my sister came indoors. She has a cold and is feeling wretched. We put her on Farmkid duty, at her request, and she had a lovely easy time of it because Farmkid had gotten sucked into reading. Also she was surrounded by people she adores, alums of the farm who came back to work and also to pay attention to her, which she loves, and that’d put anyone in a good mood. (Sister came back outside numerous times but at least she got to disappear back indoors for long periods. IDK if it helped but she was at least in a better mood than yesterday.)
So I went out and helped with turkey pickup. The way it works is people had pre-ordered turkeys and had put down a deposit and specified their approximate preferences for a size. The smallest we ever offer the concept of is 15 pounds. A bunch of people had chosen that. “Or smaller, if possible!” (Listen, people. I know a lot of you do this, you buy tiny turkeys at the grocery store. Do you want to know some bad news? Adult turkeys aren’t ten pounds. You’re buying them as babies. You’re welcome for this bit of news. Ask me about Cornish game hens sometimes. Yes they don’t even have feathers yet when they kill them, those are baby chickens.)
The smallest turkey we processed yesterday was 16.7 pounds.
The largest was over 28.
The average was 22.
So anyway. You can guess how my brother in law was feeling about that. He goes through the list of the weights of the individual turkeys once they’ve been packaged, and matches an individual turkey to each person who orders– and first pick goes to the people who signed up first. So the earlier you sign up, the closer you’re going to get to your request. People who signed up last week get basically zero preference, that’s just how it works. And then people who wound up on the waitlist get literally whatever we have left.
He decided the thing to do was offer people who’d chosen lighter turkeys a discount if they traded up to take a bigger one. People jumped on that, a bunch of the sixteen-pound-preference folks who’d been given seventeen-pounders were happy enough to take home a twenty-four pounder instead. So, good.
At the end of the day, after a whole bunch of heavy lifting, we’d successfully converted most of the turkeys the rest of the way from live turkeys into cold hard cash. This is the single biggest income day of the year on this farm, I think. Of course there’s a shitload of expenses that went into raising those turkeys, so it’s not actually that big a profit, but in terms of actual monetary intake, turkey pickup has to be pretty high up there.
We’ve got a few left over but there are some waitlist people who haven’t called back yet, and so on. We did pretty well overall.
Tomorrow I have to clean the slaughterhouse again, and Tuesday is the second turkey processing day. They’re birds someone else raised, who we just process for, and he pays us money to do it, so we figure we might as well, but man is it exhausting to contemplate right now.
I’m in bed super early and Whiskey the yurt cat is happily kneading the blankets. I’ve taken a bunch of ibuprofen and I’m ready to sleep for a long time. Whew.
We had a few solemn collective moments of reflection, today, as we contemplated people who work in commercial poultry slaughterhouses. We do this once ok twice a year, and it’s too much. We can’t imagine doing twelve-hour shifts of it year round with no bathroom breaks. Maybe remember that in your Thanksgiving reflections, to think about the people who grew your food. Not to be preachy but if you paid twenty bucks for your twelve pound turkey I would gently like to prompt you to wonder who paid the rest of what that really costs. Again, not to be gross and holier than thou, but this was hard fucking work and you literally could not pay me any amount of money to do it, I only do it for love and fun and camaraderie, and we have a great time but it’s hard fucking work and it’s only palatable because we all want to be there.
so we made it through today too. yesterday was the turkey processing, right, where we converted live turkeys into dead turkeys. today was turkey packaging, which is self-explanatory, and I had done half of in advance in a terrible rush in precarious and exhausting conditions yesterday, so it went well. And then it was Turkey Pickup, when we convert the dead turkeys into money.
During packaging, I watched Farmkid, who had like six tantrums, and then the last one she was FREAKING OUT because she wanted to dress up in cat-themed clothes but I wouldn’t let her have just tights on in the 33-degree pouring rain, she had to wear pants, and she was in full-on mid-scream-sob about how she didn’t have any cat pants when suddenly, with tears streaming, she stopped and said “Oh wait I have kitty jeans” and then was all sunshine.
For real. She put them on, and then was sweet and cheerful and agreeable and totally forgot she’d ever been mad at me, we were all fine. I actually had earlier let her cry herself out and when I came upstairs she’d slammed her bedroom door shut. Well there’s a weird protruding latch on it, which is just at forehead level for her at present, and her father “fixed” it after she whacked her head on it by putting a large thick piece of cardboard over it and labeling it “[Farmkid]’s Head De-Bonker” and so when she slammed the door it had gone flying off. So I opened the door, noticed it was missing, and before she could scream at me, said “Oh no the Head De-Bonker! Where is it??!?!” and we urgently had to search the room to find it and replace it, and she forgot she was going to shriek at me. So anyway. Then there was a meltdown over the outfit, but it ended. After the recollection of the kitty jeans we had no more disagreements, which was weird but I’ll take it. And after a few hours of following her around, I asked if she wanted to keep reading her book, and she got excited about it and then read for like. Two hours.
I got out to the barn just in time to see the very last four turkeys get packaged. I helped precisely 0 with this. Which was fine.
After lunch my sister came indoors. She has a cold and is feeling wretched. We put her on Farmkid duty, at her request, and she had a lovely easy time of it because Farmkid had gotten sucked into reading. Also she was surrounded by people she adores, alums of the farm who came back to work and also to pay attention to her, which she loves, and that’d put anyone in a good mood. (Sister came back outside numerous times but at least she got to disappear back indoors for long periods. IDK if it helped but she was at least in a better mood than yesterday.)
So I went out and helped with turkey pickup. The way it works is people had pre-ordered turkeys and had put down a deposit and specified their approximate preferences for a size. The smallest we ever offer the concept of is 15 pounds. A bunch of people had chosen that. “Or smaller, if possible!” (Listen, people. I know a lot of you do this, you buy tiny turkeys at the grocery store. Do you want to know some bad news? Adult turkeys aren’t ten pounds. You’re buying them as babies. You’re welcome for this bit of news. Ask me about Cornish game hens sometimes. Yes they don’t even have feathers yet when they kill them, those are baby chickens.)
The smallest turkey we processed yesterday was 16.7 pounds.
The largest was over 28.
The average was 22.
So anyway. You can guess how my brother in law was feeling about that. He goes through the list of the weights of the individual turkeys once they’ve been packaged, and matches an individual turkey to each person who orders– and first pick goes to the people who signed up first. So the earlier you sign up, the closer you’re going to get to your request. People who signed up last week get basically zero preference, that’s just how it works. And then people who wound up on the waitlist get literally whatever we have left.
He decided the thing to do was offer people who’d chosen lighter turkeys a discount if they traded up to take a bigger one. People jumped on that, a bunch of the sixteen-pound-preference folks who’d been given seventeen-pounders were happy enough to take home a twenty-four pounder instead. So, good.
At the end of the day, after a whole bunch of heavy lifting, we’d successfully converted most of the turkeys the rest of the way from live turkeys into cold hard cash. This is the single biggest income day of the year on this farm, I think. Of course there’s a shitload of expenses that went into raising those turkeys, so it’s not actually that big a profit, but in terms of actual monetary intake, turkey pickup has to be pretty high up there.
We’ve got a few left over but there are some waitlist people who haven’t called back yet, and so on. We did pretty well overall.
Tomorrow I have to clean the slaughterhouse again, and Tuesday is the second turkey processing day. They’re birds someone else raised, who we just process for, and he pays us money to do it, so we figure we might as well, but man is it exhausting to contemplate right now.
I’m in bed super early and Whiskey the yurt cat is happily kneading the blankets. I’ve taken a bunch of ibuprofen and I’m ready to sleep for a long time. Whew.
We had a few solemn collective moments of reflection, today, as we contemplated people who work in commercial poultry slaughterhouses. We do this once ok twice a year, and it’s too much. We can’t imagine doing twelve-hour shifts of it year round with no bathroom breaks. Maybe remember that in your Thanksgiving reflections, to think about the people who grew your food. Not to be preachy but if you paid twenty bucks for your twelve pound turkey I would gently like to prompt you to wonder who paid the rest of what that really costs. Again, not to be gross and holier than thou, but this was hard fucking work and you literally could not pay me any amount of money to do it, I only do it for love and fun and camaraderie, and we have a great time but it’s hard fucking work and it’s only palatable because we all want to be there.
