end of turkeys

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/u7LgBqo

we did a second turkey processing yesterday. 10 birds for a “retired” farmer– really astonishingly beautiful ones, they were all like 23-25 lbs and flawless fat symmetrical specimens– and then 92 for another local farmer, and his were highly variable. Two of them were five pounds. We put them into chicken bags, to give them a bit of dignity in death, rather than having them swim in the turkey bags. His biggest were 26 and 27 lbs. It was quite a range. Some of his were very young though, he’d had them die and had replaced them with new ones and there just hadn’t been time for them to size up. It’s not that he doesn’t know how to farm, but he mostly is a cattle farmer, so turkeys are low on the priority list. He had some ideas of how to improve.

When he’d come by ahead of time to drop some stuff off, he’d had his very young son in the car with him, and while he was talking to my sister, the boy had been nodding off in his car seat, snuggling his favorite comfort toy: a measuring tape. Like just straight up a regular old 25-foot retractable measuring tape like you get at any hardware store. “He loves that thing,” the farmer said.

(I first met this farmer when he was pretty little; his cousin was one of my best friends in elementary school, and I’d attend her family reunions because she was an only child and what’s one more kid anyway. It’s funny to think that of course the whole time he was only a couple of years younger than me, and that means nothing now.)

The second turkey processing went so smoothly. We finished killing before 10:30, so we just set up and packaged right away. That went smoothly too, and we were done at lunch, which was awesome.

I’m ready for a long break, but there’s a lot of shenanigans upcoming– family has already arrived from Maryland, the Teen Boy nephews are hunting deer, that BIL is apparently cooking all the meat for thanksgiving in the commercial kitchen and then is making a bunch of deer meat into sausage using our equipment there, and so I’m probably just going to have to ride herd on that process because i know how to use all the equipment, so. Just gonna set myself up with some beers and let it all happen.

ALso am attempting to convince the Teen Boys that they want to help me put up the ceiling in my cabin. Or at least, help me take all that expensive finished lumber and load it into the cabin so it doesn’t sit outdoors under the snow all winter. That’d be a really great idea, honestly. So we’ll see if they’ll do it, in return for me having shown them how to use the Huge Meat Grinder.

hokay gotta go see about the various Doings (Your picture was not posted)