This picture shows how our Saturday afternoon started out. We showed up to a member of our churches house at about 12:30 p.m. Our chickens had been delivered the night before by another family from our church. There were four church families there including us. We had been raising these chickens since the last week of July. After eight weeks and several hundred pounds of food, our 78 chickens were ready to be butchered. We made the first cut of a chicken at 12:39 p.m. By about 2:30 p.m. we were finished cleaning the last one. We soaked them in a large cooler over night and bagged them after church on Sunday afternoon. We got them home that afternoon and put them into the freezer. We now have half a freezer full of good, healthy, un-medicated, steroid-free chickens. Obviously, there is a lot that went on between that time (and we do have photographs) that I won't share. All in all, a very educational day. It's neat to work together with brothers and sisters in Christ. They didn't want paid for their services. They wanted to help. Allowing the church to help us saved us about $200 in processing fees. Plus, we learned to to clean chickens. We have pigs that will be ready to slaughter at the end of December/begining of January. Rumor has it, there's a family in our church that can butcher pigs and cattle. I'm not sure if we're ready for that. I'll keep you posted though.
