fortunate

[dragonlady7]

down, oh my gosh, i am so sleepy, the rain kept me up

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It was mild on Saturday, which is great, as we were processing turkeys and needed the water lines not to freeze. Then the temperature dropped sharply that night, well below freezing– which was perfect, because we had 120 turkeys sitting in ice baths in a room (a further 30 had been packaged and were in the walk-in cooler, but no more would fit in there), and it being cold meant we didn’t have to try to run out in the middle of the night and try to dump more ice over them. And the next day, it stayed chilly– which was perfect, because what we do is that we package the turkeys and lay them out in the kill room, and that’s the “fridge”, whatever room temperature is. So far every year it has worked to have the turkeys at the ambient outdoor temperature because it’s been in the 20s every year. (Also this is why when people are like “can i pick my turkey up late” we are like NO because still like ten people didn’t show up and even with a walk-in cooler YOU try finding room for TEN goddamned turkeys, you CAN’T.)

And then last night the temperature rose, starting while we were still standing out there freezing our asses off. We left all the baskets of eggs just sitting out, because it was 45-50 all night. No problem! Left the water lines on, left things hooked up, no big deal. Last night after we put everything outdoors away, it started getting windy and then it started pouring rain at like 3 in the morning and we all woke up with it and all shrugged and rolled over, because today’s mostly indoor work.

Anyway it was nice that the weather cooperated, because I’m goddamned exhausted. Yesterday we packaged, weighed, and marked down 146 turkeys, and each turkey was individually identified by its specific (to two decimal places) weight, and then BIL sat and matched up people’s desired size of turkey to the individual turkeys we actually had. It’s a nerve-wracking thing he has to do every year, because it’s in order of signup. The people who put down their turkey deposit in January get exactly what they asked for. The lady who called on Friday about turkeys got whatever was left. [Both of those individuals asked for “up to 15 lbs”, our smallest category. The first one got our only 13-pounder. The last one got a 24.8 lb turkey, with the option to take instead a damaged 19-pounder. (Broke a wing in the plucker.) She chose the damaged one.]

Nobody really flipped out. We have some customers who’ll ask for “15-18 lbs” and freak out when it’s 17 because, IDK, they thought we should read their minds and know they really wanted 15 lbs. (The one guy was like “well the situation has changed!” and I’m like “bro the turkeys haven’t tho?”)

We always enclose a little slip with tips on how to cook a fresh turkey– a bird that’s never been frozen is a whole lot faster to cook because it’s generally slightly warmer inside than out, while a thawed bird is the opposite. So even experienced cooks are often taken off-guard by how fast the fresh bird is done. Usually, on the back, we put on a little ad about holiday wreaths, but we don’t have greens this year, so instead Farmsister wrote up a little tutorial on how to cut up the bird before cooking– the recommendation was to cut off the limbs and snap off the spine, and then just cook the breast and ribcage so it’s scenic and beautiful and not so much meat. Then later you can thaw the parts singly or together for special-occasion but small-scale meals.

People were a mix of resigned and furtive; some were like “yeah we’re not having anyone over” and some were like “shhh it’s just a few people really!” and some were like “it’s just our isolation pod! but we’re a biggish isolation pod!” and some were like “our plans are our business”– but not a single person was like “oh it’s nothing,” they all were like “man things are different this year and it’s scary and we’re doing our best”, which was. I mean. There was a sense of camaraderie about it. This county’s gone down under 1% positive test rate, this week, but not a lot of people are getting tested at the moment, so that could really be a good OR bad sign.

Anyway– that field of honking weird dinosaurs has been converted to cash-in-hand, for the most part, and that’s a huge weight off everyone’s shoulders, but today we had to catch up on the last four days’ of egg-washing and packing, and later we’re going to have to re-set the whole slaughterhouse but I’m taking a few moments to sit here and catch up on things.

I’m sore as fuck but I haven’t taken anything because I don’t want to overdo it today, because.

Tomorrow is turkey slaughter day again!!!!

115? ish? for a kid whose cousin I used to be friends with in kindergarten, and another 15-20ish for the people we do chickens for all year.

Sigh.

Just gotta get through that, and then Wednesday is THanksgiving prep, and then Thursday I can’t really sleep in but I can probably spend most of the day day-drinking and providing sarcastic commentary as one of the pair of spinster aunts (M-L and I have a routine we can start to do now that the niblings are old enough to Appreciate It, and non-farm BIL is guaranteed to be driven nuts by it so bonus!) and then we can spend all day Friday driving back again.

Yay.

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[minoanmiss]

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