We Turned 13 Chickens into Breakfast Sausage

We killed the fat old lady hens, and now today in this vlog, I'm gonna turn them into sausage. You just simply cannot buy this in the store. Let's see how it goes. Will you eat it now? White chocolate chips in your yogurt. Don't need nut anymore. We got nature's great light out, and we have our first frost. Look, there's lots of honey in there. He's screaming for honey, but I put honey in it. I can feel the overwhelm. I gotta make chicken sausage, I gotta start the lunch roast, I need to feed the chickens, I need to do Harriet, train Harriet. Hey, I need to take care of Henry. Henry, where are you going? I'll post it on X. How do you live in the moment? I'm gonna film myself getting stressed out.

Let's see.

Just put my hand on my heart. Just take a couple deep breaths. Think of 3 things I'm thankful for. Farm fresh eggs. Just ate together as a family. This yogurt with these in-season apples. Opportunities to do good things today. I mean, we're making ground chicken. You cut these up for us last night.

What's that?

The bowl. All right, you eat that one. You want me to eat this one?

What happened to boys?

Yeah, not bad for not being completely ripe. You like it?

I've done the whole thing.

Thank you, you cooked it. What do I do? I need my eyes in that sun. I need to start the roast. I need to feed the chickens. Hey, can I go and feed the chickens real quick?

Uh, let me just show you one minute ago.

Will you be okay if I go do that? I don't know what he's doing. Okay, thank you. What do you need in that so that I can go do the chickens? I see it's blue. What do you want to do with it? What do you want in it? Okay, there's just some milk. Okay, are you happy so I can go do the chickens real quick? Don't bother Mom, she's getting ready. Wait, what are you cooking?

I'm cooking the watermelon.

You like cooked watermelon? Okay, we'll see how those turn out. He said they're hot. Okay, I'm not hot enough so much that you can touch them.

This one's really hot.

Okay, do you want me to get it up here for you? Yeah, it is hot. It is too bright.

Good.

Okay, good. I'm proud of you cooking, Henry. I gotta go get sun in my eyes and feed these chickens. Okay, we need a tablespoon. It's a little more than a tablespoon. Let's get two birds with one stone. Let's get morning light in our eyes and feed those chickens at the same time. The roast will have to wait. Maybe we cook it a little warmer. This is the most important thing you could be doing right now. Getting protein to my chickens. I'm taking a risk. I didn't get fish meal in my custom feed mix because I'm hopeful that I'm gonna have enough farm proteins. Farm protein, eggshells. I didn't mix it with our NutriBalance because really I ought to give them free choice. But until then, I looked it up. I asked Garth how much, you know, 8 pounds. How much do I put in? And tablespoons of each thing, 8 to 9 tablespoons. Probably should have put this in yesterday when I soaked this, or we'll do it later when I bring this back and soak it. Hide this.

Let's see if they even like it.

They still had food left over from yesterday. I don't know how telling this is, but they didn't just go crazy for this. Oh, they are eating it now because it's whole grains and it was only soaked a day. I want to get it to where I'm actually sprouting it, which would be soaked for a day and then left to stay wet. We need to make sure they have grit. Yeah, a whole mound of this after the hurricane. This is their teeth. That's why I call this rooster teeth. Helps them break it down. They're kind of clamoring. We got to get them off this pasture. They keep making divots. Chickens aren't the priority, cows are. We don't have time to move the chickens every day. That's what it would take for them not to tear this up. We'll take those wood chips right there. We'll use those chickens even in the winter though. It'll break down some with the sun and the rain and the chickens turning it, manuring it, uh, and we'll turn it into this and then we'll put it on the pasture. Plus it's frosty out there. I think the chickens will be happier on a compost pile. It's warming, the warming effect. I really need to— I need to soak more feed. I need to get hay in the nest boxes, but I've really got to get lunch started. Trying to clean it up nicely here. It's coming along. These guys are hungry.

Let's see how they react.

Okay, are they going after the meat or the grain? Hey, this might not deduce, uh, egg production. It might up it. Either they're just really hungry or they actually do like it, or they're just hunting the animal proteins in there. Gideon, will you do me a favor? Take a break and get the breakfast posse some grit and both posses some hay. Hugs, hugs.

Don't you like the shirt?

What? '90s, son of a '90s boy. Getting on that road. It's 9 o'clock, it's gotta happen. But these boys, the goal is clear the board before the Sabbath and maybe even today because we're gonna have a super fun day tomorrow. Well, we have to burn that brush pile when it's wet, so we'll just— we'll take that off. Dig the ditch between the propane tank and the outside gas fitting. Compost the field. Mr. Lynch's trust. All goes well, I might be making a pizza crust out of these fat old lady hens for my son. Yes. Okay, break it off with your hand. Yeah, bud. Getting the pork for the Lynch. Yep. I'm just glad I get to eat with them. Cooked for 30 days and he didn't eat any of it. That was intense. Look at this gelatinous broth. That's whole fat old lady hen broth for you. I'm about to have a huge relief. I'm not gonna milk, or I'm not gonna train Harriet today. That's out. Lunch is on its way. I was telling Rebecca, I don't feel like I have enough time to do things, and she said, well, you did spend 4 hours on the cabin yesterday, plus 2 hours of stretching. Okay, that's her never-ending task right now, furnishing that cabin and finding good deals. It's not quick when you're having to find— when you find stuff on Facebook Marketplace and stuff like that. So props to Rebecca, and props to this one. We're getting ahead of the game. Here's to hoping this still works and doesn't fall off the counter again. Whoa, what was that? Well, you want me to hold it? Yeah, you better sit there and hold it, buddy. You're holding that. Let's see if we can't clean off this counter. It's a lot of work right now, but our future selves will thank us. This is gelatinous. Brah, it took about every one of them Super Cubes for the 5 gallons. We got another 5 gallons ready to go. So made sausage, that has to go at least 24 hours, so do it tomorrow. I have not even made sausage yet. I haven't even cut up the raw chickens, and I don't know if I'm putting that off or if the boys really need me, but we got to get the tractor started. We call the tractor Lucky. Because we're lucky if it starts. I may be putting it off. I'm not looking forward to de-skinning, deboning 13 raw chickens. The key was on. That would do it, guys. I think that was just loose. This might start.

Nope.

Okay, now it shouldn't spark. We need We didn't do a deep trickle charge on it. We're gonna have to park this over by the shed. All right, we'll just let it go for a little while. A little grading job at the neighbor's property. Jonah went and got a culvert. When Jonah gets back from taking Lily— well, he was going to come back, right? Hopefully, yeah, I think so.

They're knocking it out.

Grab that tray. I'm gonna quit putting this off. We've got 45 minutes. Let's see what we can do in 45 minutes before we need to start thinking about Lunch. Okay, bring it down here and I'll put it on you. Maybe we'll just do a few at a time. Yeah, I don't know if I'm excited about you working with this because it's raw chicken. I'm not gonna watch it.

Oh, okay, good.

That took 7 minutes. We got to speed that up because, uh, 13— well, that'd be 70 minutes for 10. Come on, let's do this in an hour. I think that was a rooster, which are more lean, but look at this. Look at this fat. That's gonna be an excellent sausage. You can't buy that. You just can't buy that. And that's going to kick our Cornish cross sausage's butt. Coming along nicely. Look, I'm being loose with getting this meat off because if I leave anything on the bones, it's fine because it's going to come down into chicken bits, which makes for an excellent soup. It's super healthy meat, so we're not losing it. We're just not getting it in sausage. I'm getting faster. I think I'm doing it in under 5 minutes. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. I've got 35 minutes. I want to start making lunch. That'll be basically no margin, just running up from here, uh, peeling and frying some sweet potatoes, go with the stew, figuring out some other vegetable. Let's keep going. 1, 2, 3, 4, and a half left. I was good till I cut my thumb. Got it real good. Let's see what the boys are up to. Give my finger a minute to stop bleeding. If my blood gets in the chicken and we eat it, does that make us cannibals? Hey, tractor must have started. He had to go get Lily. You want to go help me cut these chickens up? Didn't hurt at first, now it's hurting. All right, we got it done. Josiah was to clean up down there. I've washed these cutting boards. Did you clean up down there? Sprayed this stuff down? Yeah. I'm gonna lay these wooden cutting boards that had raw chicken all over them out in the sun to sanitize. I think this is enough. We got the sweet potatoes on. I'm feeling good. Mama's still shopping. We're gonna get this done in time. Lily's here, she's helping me. I feel like you can take a breath. Okay, what to do with this? Here's our bottleneck. Get that cooking, it'd be ready tomorrow. I could cook that and be ready in 4 hours with the Instant Pot, but this is our bottleneck. The super cubes are going to need at least 24 hours. Okay, this chicken is a week old on Sunday. Today is Thursday. I'll work tomorrow. I don't want to work on Saturday. Sunday, will we have time? We have the team meetup in the afternoon. We'll have time then. So it's gonna have to be— what, so if I cook this now, get it off tomorrow, it'll, it'll then be broth. So it should last longer. All I'll be doing is super cubing because I'll have the broth. That won't take that— that won't take that long. Oh honey, why are you so sad? You're so— the onion. Two pots going with broth, just boiling, and then turn them down and let them go all night till tomorrow morning. Hey boys, only get the orange ones. Oh yeah, good job. You need those gloves. Hey, there's the— there's the tool I was looking for too. Okay, good. Look who's back. Tomato salad. How much longer are those gonna last? Frost's coming on. Not long, even if we put the sides down.

Oh, but yeah, we can put the sides down. Let's make them last as long as possible, baby.

Well, we got to put our chickens in there. My chickens.

We'll just pull up one time.

Pull up your tomatoes. They become my chickens. Are we putting them in there? I thought we weren't putting them. We are, we are putting them in there.

We go back and forth.

Yeah, we're just gonna mark the beds and just rebuild them on the one side. Look at this. What? Shall we celebrate? It's our everyday type of lunch, but every day we should celebrate.

Every day.

That's a meal from the farm, bro. You're gonna make mozzarella today or tomorrow?

Mozzarella tonight.

All right, I like it. I like getting ready for Friday's meal. They're on Thursday. Let's see if we can have a super fun day tomorrow, except we have to wait for the door guy to come. Is that gonna be before lunch?

He said morning.

I'm gonna text him, you guys.

Okay. What'd you remove, bud? The compost and the field in the back. All right, we're gonna have that board done. We're gonna start the tallow after lunch, and that's gonna have to be tomorrow. It's fun to have everybody back. We ate breakfast together. We ate breakfast. We eat breakfast together. We eat lunch together. We eat supper together. These are the good old days, guys. You got to recognize them when we're in them. It's a lot of hard work to make this play happen. I know, a lot of consistent work.

I know, as I was at the grocery store picking up a bag of carrots because our carrots didn't germinate this year, and onions because we had a failed attempt with them.

I got yeast, which we use because we don't grow—

well, we can't buy it, we can't grow it. I was like thinking, man, we gotta up our carrot and, um, onions and peppers this year. I didn't buy peppers. I mean, all my lunchbox peppers did good, but I really, really, really want— like, I'm haunted by last year. I had so many peppers ready to harvest. And they got flushed away by her.

We've got her canvas almost clean, but if she's gonna make mozzarella today, I believe she told me she needed 3 gallons. I'm so glad I just came down here. I didn't know this didn't get put away. Holy moly. Look at that cream line. When I say skim skim, we're ladling it, so it's not really proper skim. There is some cream still in it. And I got you 3 gallons. Well, I thought I had 3 gallons. Beauty says I need exactly 3 gallons.

Yeah, I need more gallons.

What are you making this time? Blueberry pie. Do you actually like blueberry pie? Yeah, it's better. Heck yes. Oh, what's this?

We're making blueberry pie for banana.

You're proud of that pie, aren't you?

Yeah, it's poi.

It looks good. She's gonna be the 4-H officer for the horse— what is it, Lily? The horse department? The horse club. She needs Jonah to take her. Let's go. For that to happen, we gotta get him off the Mini X. He needs to dig the propane line ditch. Let's go see if we can't do that real quick. What'd y'all do on that? Y'all left a bunch of stuff. Put that over here. Just moves it out of the way. Put that right here and we'll block it. It's gonna go back there. That white one goes there. Okay, boss. It goes from here to the middle of the tank. Don't hit this. Hey, right here like this. They want you to go straight right here. Okay, it's not— you're— you can do it. It can be a little— just go do it. Get repositioned if you need to. Okay, hopefully we didn't hit that. That's the power probably to the shed right here.

Standing over by this. Do not touch this gas pipe.

Checking in on the board. Hey, you kind of like this where we try to get rid of it by the Sabbath, huh? All right, congratulations, bro. Congratulations. Tomorrow— well, I'll call him every day. Beef tallow and old lady sauce, and then bring on the rest. I think we can get it done in the morning. That's the goal. If we get that done, we're going to take everybody hiking in the afternoon, and then Shabbat dinner— they've decided on pizza this evening. I went ahead and put the minerals in. I'm getting my whole grains soaked. They're pretty hard, but soaking them helps, and it breaks down the anti-nutrients, making it more digestible. It's going to go 15 to 25% further, just that. The minerals ought to get absorbed more into the food being soaked all night. Got some wood chips spread out, a deep bedding for the chickens. We're gonna get them off our pasture, gonna finish putting out the compost. It's late in the year, this will be a while before this breaks down, but it will break down over time and we'll have compost for our pasture. Oh my gosh, well, it didn't hurt our egg production today. Where most of them from the The Breakfast Posse, the little ones?

Yeah, and some of those were there.

We just got back from Lily's 4-H. Mm-mm. Not gonna happen. There was a misunderstanding. We thought her friend was gonna bring her home, but even so, even so, so I had to go get her. We don't revolve our life around our children. We love our children. I'd die for my children. Don't get me wrong. I spend more time with my children than I think anybody I know. We, for the longest time, have revolved our life around the family cow, the homestead, growing food. We can't be out there with the normal people doing all the things. We can't do that. And we're starting to revolve our life around the sun first and foremost. We've been moving back our milk times to the first light as we just did every few weeks because it's getting dark— it's getting lighter later. And we ain't gonna change that when the time changes. We're gonna keep milking with the sunrise. So evening events? Mm-mm. Mm-mm. No. No. No. Exceptions, yes. Regular evening events, no. When I came home, you know, I was out there in just the normal world, people out there being normal, and I got back— let me show you this. First of all, it's dark like this going to my bedroom, and then Beauty has this set up and it's just so nice and inviting, and I'm back into my bubble and world that we've created. And I love it. And I love it. And I wanna guard it because it's worth it. Happy day.