Teaching the next generation how to butcher a chicken

It's butchering day. Lily, you like getting up early?

Yeah, I have to drive because it looks more professional if you have a taxi.

All right. Do you like butchering day? Yeah. What do you like about it?

Cutting.

We have some very special guests coming to help us butcher today. Abundance Plus members. It's a trade. They come and learn how to butcher. Good morning, everybody.

Can I cut this chicken?

I think so. Okay, you guys are excited this year, huh?

Yeah, but we're always excited.

You're not usually excited.

When we pass by the brooder, let's grab a bag of shavings.

Two rules for animals: if they're in one spot, deep bedding. If they're not, they need to be moving. We don't break the rules even for butchering day.

Morning!

You coming? You want to butcher some chickens? Wood shavings down. Y'all go ahead, you just get in there, grab them with two hands. There you go. Joseph shows how it's done. I like this idea. Gloves. Yeah, good idea.

How long's it been since they've eaten?

Last night we didn't feed them, so they probably ran out yesterday afternoon. We're gonna see just how effective Tube Man was. I think he's 100% chicken butchering trusses. Our trusses for our house— well, is it a remodel at this point? The roof and walls are gone. I think it's a rebuild. Cranes coming. Jonah, you found a duty? Yeah, sort of.

Try to rinse them off first before they go to the scalding.

I don't know if it's gonna work or not. It's not really getting it off. Scott, self-proclaimed city boy.

Yeah, first time.

What's it like, first time? Is it gross? No. Kenny, how many have you done? Just one. Oh yeah, you've gone all the way through? All the way through. It's insane. It's your first time? First time. And you're excited? You're pumped? Scott, are you as alive as Kenny right now?

Oh, absolutely. I really love it. Thank you for the opportunity.

Yeah, nothing like killing something to make you feel alive. How you doing, bird?

Good. I've done 3 chickens.

Nice.

You help me try and kill one?

This is a hot tub?

Yeah.

You making a buddy? Yeah, just let him rest. False sense of security right here. Now, B-Rock, you want to kill the baby? Oh, I sure am. You like that duty? It's fun.

Nice big one.

Nice.

Look at this, Henry. Ow.

What?

Ow.

Ow.

Ow.

He's saying ow. You know that hurts.

Do you like to eat chicken? Yeah.

My oldest is his age, I think. Coming from like opposite life, coming from Brooklyn. We went to Virginia. It's crazy. Um, but how do you get your kids like to do this, you know? Yeah, it's wild. Well, this is how— it's always ever been around. They don't have this weird disconnect that we have. They don't have this weird emotion around it. It's just life and how it is. So how old are your kids? Uh, 2 and a half and 9 months. Oh, just start doing it and act like it's normal because it is normal. Yeah, yeah. So don't put on that it's this big thing and they'll be just fine.

See, I've been planning on getting a homestead now for almost 2 years, and my whole family thinks I'm insane. Nah, because it's a total life change for me, you know. And, uh, I mean, when I told them I was coming here to butcher chickens— yeah, my mom lives about an hour and a half from here, so I'm going this afternoon to visit my mom.

Yeah.

And, uh, so I'll be telling her all about it because she's like, yeah, I remember my mom when I was a kid used to cut them off. With a hatchet and they'd run around. I said, well, they do it different now.

That's right.

So I was trying to tell her about the cone method and all that.

You're up, Roberto. You've done this before? This will be my second one. He wins the furthest away competition. Puerto Rico. I have 8 chickens in my home. Oh, you have 8 chickens that I need to process. All right, now say that in Spanish. Este proceso. Man, y'all are keeping up.

Papa, can I try getting the chicken?

I think so. Somebody jumped up on the thing. I don't think he'll jump off, but just in case. Test the feet. Yep, it's ready to go. Get the remaining feathers out. Oh, it's still hot. Just you two racing? I cheat a little bit. Jonah, you're gonna race him?

Yeah.

Uh-oh. I'm gonna win. Why? Why do you say that? Why? I don't know. I do a lot of birds. Oh, do you? Yeah. Chicken your favorite? Yeah. You do a lot of birds? Uh, a couple thousand a year. What?

Yeah.

He's got me beat. This is Mr. Efficient. I cheat. You cheat? Knives disappear. You have to use your teeth. So what are you here to do if you've been— if you've butchered chickens? Because I've never done it with someone that's done it as long as you guys have, and I've already learned 6 different things. Oh really, like what? The tying the feet. Tying the feet. The kill that you did by the poke kill. That's a game changer. So I might have been doing it for a while, but I could have been doing it wrong. Yeah, for a while. Do you put water in your blood buckets? I do. That's another trick. We do water— the poop trick, that's new. Never done that. Just your feet. You're good, you're good. Let it drip off in there. He's into it today. I'll take it. It's kind of a pain to help them when they're young, but When they're young, they're excited about it, and then they become 15 and they're actually a lot of help. We've already butchered 5. Bring it over here. Get any loose stuff you can off. Let's do it up and close and personal with you with a GoPro. All right, first thing, why don't we cut off the oil gland since we're right there?

Okay, like this?

Yep, down and out on that oil gland. Good. Now turn it on its back. Okay, bend your legs backwards so you can see the joint between those two knobs. Good. Grab your shears over there and cut your head off. Down up towards the jaw.

There you go.

Yep, good. Put it in the thing. Cut around the neck to get the neck skin off. You might hold the skin so you can grab it. There you go. And now saw on it. Good. Now put it on its side and do the side. There you go. Yeah. Okay, now turn it on its side and get the other. On your mark, get set, go! Go! Someone had a broken leg. Nick is Mr. Efficient, Jonah is just go-getter, and Caleb has butchered a thousand chickens. You've already got the guts out?

Yep, they're right there.

Dang. Done. No, you're not done. Oh shoot, I'm not done.

What about the gland?

Caleb's pretty close.

He's got to get his hand off the net. Oh my gosh, the gland. You're killing me. I think I'm done. There's more.

Uh-oh, Nick's getting close. Caleb's getting close.

I'm done.

Done. Okay, everybody says they're done. I was not— hold on, turn around. It's too late. We're gonna— oh, you got it! I thought you're gonna miss.

He's making fancy burgers.

Where's my scissors? Nick had a bonus because he wrapped the legs. Well, let's see, did you get the lungs out?

Yeah, both of them. I checked.

I mean, you didn't get the testicles out. You did good, Jonah. You got them. You got these pros. Okay, good job, guys. Pretty much same time. You got those guys, man. Proud of you. What happened, Nick? What? There's a tie. These knives suck. Cut it. Yeah, it takes a lot of patience to train them. I'm fortunate though, I have the spectrum of children. I have the little ones that are excited and have to be taught, and I have the big ones that know how to do it. In 5 or 6 years, you'll be racing some pro. Slice just above the keel bones and just slit enough to open it. Now put, put your fingers in there, one on the upper cavity and one on the bottom. There you go. You're pulling it apart so you can reach your hand in there. Okay, now reach up around the edges of the the guts to get the connective tissue off. You can start pulling guts out. See the guts? Don't, don't pull those out. The intestine. We have a chicken that failed to thrive. Look how little that thing is. Oh my gosh, tiny. Oh yeah. And then the second sign, he showed me a— maybe some sort of abscess. Looked like fatty tissue. But guys, here's a good example of a bad liver.

Is that a liver? That's a liver.

Is this a liver? Yep, that is a liver.

So I'm done, and then pull your gut out.

Just get in. I'm gonna teach you how to cut it. Now cut to the left of it. No, no, no, pull it. Really? Cut to the left of it without cutting it. So you're gonna go down, under, and then down again.

So like—

there you go, there you go. Without hitting it. Yeah. Right, hold this and then you can cut. There you go.

It's good.

First chicken takes a while, but you get the hang of it. Good job. Now rinse it off, you're done. Okay, you did it, buddy. How do you— how does it make you feel?

I don't know.

Feel pretty tough? Feel pretty proud? All right, more chickens coming. You okay?

Yeah.

What took so long getting the meat birds? Everything went well.

Okay, Justin is outside butchering chickens, and when you butcher chickens, you don't want to eat chicken for dinner. So we are gonna have a pulled pork with— made out of fresh ham. I found an amazing recipe from J&L Green Farm. You can go to their website. I'm hoping if this really tastes good, we are going to do this for the Fourth of July because we're gonna cook like 2 gigantic, like huge hams. Like, I think they're probably like 10, 15 pounds, maybe bigger. So we're gonna cook a couple of those and probably smoke them. I mixed up a whole nother recipe of the rub, and I'm gonna really suck it to it because I feel like I didn't put enough on there that time. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to like really put a lot on. Now that that is done, I'm gonna put the lid on it and put it in the oven at 275. It's noon right now. They said that an hour before it is— before you want to eat, turn it off. It will absorb the juices and reward you with extra flavor. So I was like, oh, that sounds like a good plan. So I'm gonna let it cook for about 4 hours. I'll check it you know, I'll check it in between, um, and then kind of see if I need to like move things around or add any liquid or anything like that. But we'll see how it turns out. Next up, we're gonna make lunch. Lily is getting cleaned up and then is gonna come and help me. Um, we have our Mesa corn chips. These are store-bought chips— well, not store-bought, online-bought chips that are fried in tallow. They're properly prepared corn and they taste pretty good. So we've got those to go on the bottom of the nachos, and then I'm just looking for the rest of our ingredients. Messiah is here. He is going to fry up some pork rinds for lunch. That's the carnivore chip. So the boys, uh, on Monday did the pork rinds. They did the whole process themselves because they wanted to have some pork rinds. We have leftover chicken. Justin the carnivore said we don't care, we want to eat chicken, so I'm making chicken for them. Even though I said previously that you put your chickens, you don't want to eat chicken, that was before, I guess, and now this is now.

Back hasn't started hurting yet. Oh really? Anybody butchering chickens this year? August?

Oh yeah, yeah, July.

When you butchering chickens, B-Rock? Uh, probably in 6 weeks. Nice. When you going to do it? I think 4 weeks.

4 weeks?

Yeah, I have 2 weeks left. Boy, nothing like waiting to the last minute to hone your skills. I had to get some more confidence before I was ready to get some more. Okay, we got somebody.

Next year for me.

Okay, 5 weeks for you. First week of August, it's bagging time. First things first, Nancy getting them out of the— you like that duty?

I'm doing QC as I pull them out.

Oh good. Nick stuffing. You do this trick or you part them before you freeze them? I always sell them as just whole birds and people always want organ and feet all separate, so I sell them by the pound individually. Put them on a homemade PVC dry rack, bag them. Who's twisting? You're about to You ever tried it? We're gonna stuff them, put the neck, the head, and the legs in there, and then that forces us to make a broth when we come up. And that's just a cavity taking up space in your freezer, and so we're just maximizing our freezer space. You've twisted it, you put on zip tie yet? Got some blank stickers. This would be a good time to weigh and label them, wait if we need to, but I don't think we need to. They're a little on the little side. I think, I think it's been a cool spring and they've been using calories to stay warm as opposed to grow. Let's dip them in 180. Good. 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, pull. Lily, you on this duty too? Yeah. What do you think? Looks like something you'd buy at the farmer's market, doesn't it? Just hold it steady.

Oh, okay.

So you can see the bubbles. That's it, pull. Okay, good. Lily, show them how it's done. Keep it down. Okay, pull.

I did find it. You want a ride?

What happened? You didn't make it very far. I made it 5 feet. Look at what she's done. Ham, coleslaw, sweet tea, chocolate syrup, fried onions, fried apples. Strawberry ice cream! Look at that plate. What's up with the strawberry ice cream?

I just wanted something summery.

I'll go with it.

Summer.

I'll go with it. How is it?

It's so good. Have you tasted it yet?

Oh my. So you want to do this rub for the Fourth of July? I do. Oh my, that makes ham good.

I haven't had a good ham really, but you like that?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Whoa, they are back after a week and a half of rain. Becky, your windows! They did a lot of side framing today. Yeah, perfect.

Everything I'd ever wanted to do.

This is the south side. You think those are big windows? Look at these windows. You're the crazy window lady. Wait, Rebecca, all this is window?

Yeah, for the dining room.

Good job. Look at this view out this window, Beck. Cows out there right now. Gonna have a better view of our entire farm. Play in the sawdust. There you go. And then the porch, that's going to be a sunroom. The chimney's hopefully going, and we have a big window there to look out into the front yard.

Here is going to be a big opening that's going to have doors. It's going to have, um, window doors with skylights, 2-foot skylights on either side.

We're trying to make a pole barn.

How's your view?

What? It's good, all the way out to there. Light, light pink. Walls and white trim and white curtains and a white bed and white blankets with a horse on it.

Poor lonely goose. We usually put the chicks out the day of. It's too much going on, too much to do. We got to move two men down, we got to mow more strips. He's lonely. I can tell he's trying to get out. Thanks. Now he's got companions and plenty of grass. He's forgotten all his troubles. Let's get Henry some ice cream. You want some ice cream, Tyler boy?

Can I have some chocolate?

Oh, it is hardening up. How did you learn how to make Magic Shell? Who knew you could eat— because I'm on the internet. Oh my, he's already lost his state. Look at this Magic Shell. I haven't had this in years. Is Magic Shell still a thing now? It was big when we were growing up. Look, it's Magic Shell, the topping that makes ice cream even better. Magic Shell pours on soft, then turns hard. I think it was big in the '80s.

It was huge in the '80s.

And you didn't use any chemical nonsense that they use in the store?

No, melted chocolate with some coconut oil. I mean, you gotta let it cool.