One project complete

Remember these sweet, cute little chicks?  Well today, they are dinners for our family.  It always amazes me how they can go from cute little tiny babies to big, lumbering, smelly mammoth chickens in 6-8 weeks.  

The timing was sort of hard, since we stayed up late last night watching fireworks, and then had to be up at 3 and on the road by 4 this morning.  

Couple things - first -my mom is a rock star.  She not only let me house these birds in her (mostly) predator proof coop, but she did all of the work as far as keeping them in feed and water.   I know it is a ton of work and we really appreciate it!  She also rode along with us today, even though she totally didn’t have to.  I think she likes the drive!  

Second - about 5 years ago, I had a crazy notion that we should try to grow our own meat birds.  Jim rarely tells me I am crazy, and was on board with the idea until I told him we had to do a butcher day.   I don’t think he was very excited about that part.  He found out that there is a place down at Garnett where you can have birds processed for around $2 a bird, and he was immediately a fan of this.  Flashing back to my childhood days of processing our own, the mess, the work and the overall disgust for chicken for weeks after you finish, and I quickly agreed.  And I loved going this route!   Current day, you can go to Garnett still, and they are amazing, but they have a 100 bird limit.  We like chicken, but not enough to need that many.  Not to mention you have to store them, and we don’t have that sort of freezer space.  In years past, we got a load with a couple of friends and we’re still able to go to Garnett with our 100 birds.  This year, we didn’t have any friends who were interested, and so we went to a place in Cheotpa.   They have no limits, but they also have no electricity as they are Amish. I will say, I like this place even more!   They were super friendly, amazingly efficient and so cheap!   But it is a 3 hour drive down there from here.   What we saved in processing, we more than spent on gas.   However, I had a fun day with Quincy and my mom looking around Parsons, Kansas, doing a little shopping, and having a nice breakfast!   Although we spent 6 hours on the road, it went by pretty fast.   

Since I literally got 3 hours of sleep last night, I am completely drained today, but super happy to have my birds at home in my freezer, ready for a years worth of chicken dinner.  

Interesting side note - this is Parsons lake.  It would be really beautiful except they built all these wind turbines behind it.  I know we need to change what we are doing with oil consumption, but in my opinion, this is not it.  They are so creepy!  I actually hate them.  Also, this lake seemed really trashy.  There was firework debris and trash everywhere.   Probably left over from the holiday weekend, but geez pick up after yourselves!   (Rant over).

Chickens in the freezer, sigh of relief at having this project finished, and now we are off to the ballpark. Sleep is for the weak.