Content warning for the processing of chickens to follow. We’re embracing mess both figuratively and literally here.
The co-op where I live is currently planning its annual Beltane gathering, and as part of the celebration there is always a feast. This year’s feast will feature chickens raised and processed right here on the farm, roasted to beautiful golden perfection and served with the very last of last season’s root veggies. The table will no doubt be laden with food not just from here but brought by neighbours and friends. I have every intention of documenting the bounty on film.
But the story of this feast and in particular these chickens starts well before Beltane, when a box of chicks arrived and took up residence under a sinister-looking red heat lamp in a little greenhouse last fall. These baby meat birds were carefully tended as they grew (at an alarming rate, I have to say) and they eventually graduated to the larger greenhouse. After reaching their full size about three months later, they transformed from farm animals into food.
This earlier stage is less pretty for sure. But I think in many ways it’s more interesting and more honest. Or at least it’s a crucial piece of an honest image about the delicious meal we’re about to eat.
It was snowing like crazy the morning we picked for these chickens to meet their makers, but we layered up, pulled out the pop-up tent and set up our gutting station and chopping block. We opted for the bloody but swift axe method (I watched a lot of YouTube videos on the subject and there is more than one way to skin this cat, so to speak), and cut the end off a traffic cone to hold the chickens and keep them still.
The first one went head first into the cone, and chilled right out (for reasons I don’t understand, chickens are calmed by holding them upside down). One person held the cone and rested the chicken’s head on the stump. A second person brought down the axe.
The chicken flapped for a moment, and once it stopped I tied it by the feet to a tree in the yard to drain. Next it was time to pluck. Some people have fancy chicken pluckers, which are basically washing machine drums with rubber nipples all over the inside that spin the chicken around until all the feathers come off, but we had to go old school. Scalded in a canning pot of boiling water and then pulling the feathers out by hand.
My neighbour Ingrid spent many years homesteading, and she taught the rest of us where to cut the bird open and how to loosen the organs and pull them out in one tidy package. We separated out the livers, hearts and gizzards. Then we cut off the feet to use for stock (always keep the feet for stock! So much collagen and protein, so delicious). Finally we washed them inside and out, weighed them and bagged them for the freezer.
We cooked the first two for a 40th birthday dinner and shared with friends and neighbours. I appreciated digging into that meal knowing we’d had a hand in every step of it, cared for the animals well through every step and didn’t shy away from the more gruesome bits. We also learned some important lessons, like never let a laying hen get near a meat bird. Turns out laying hens are ruthless killers.
Was it messy? Yes. Did it make me feel more connected to my food and to my neighbours and give me a greater appreciation for the necessary process of things? Forgive the cheese, but yes.
Everybody (or at least a lot of people I know) likes to say they embrace mess. The messiness of life and emotions, the imperfect process of learning and growing and making mistakes. It has become apparent to me that none of us are actually very good at it (I was raised pretty WASP-y, and believe me, no one can suppress a sticky feeling quite like ye olde anglo-saxons). It’s hard. Hard not to see mess as a breakdown of the process, or backward movement.
But I think the impetus to improve tolerance for messiness can extend into a variety of aspects of our lives. And if the other aspects are anything like the chickens, getting into the gruesome bits might prove more interesting anyway.
Maybe for me getting into the messier bits of the lifecycle of my food is easier than appreciating the challenges that arise from being a human with feelings trying to interact with other humans with feelings. So I suppose I’m asking for the grace to start where I am and go from there.
Shit’s messy. Food is messy, feelings and family are messy, and I think the more we try to hide it or deny it, the less compassion we have for each other and ourselves. And I’m hoping that getting better at it in one area helps me get better at it in others.
Since apparently my new thing is ending these missives with invitations to you to join me in whatever I’m doing, here is your invitation to join me in embracing mess. Attempting to trust that mess is a necessary part of the process of getting where we’re going.
Or at least an opportunity to document some interesting bits of life (preferably on film).
