A Day in My Life

I like to think of myself as a back-to-the-earth kind of woman. I garden organically, compost and recycle as much as possible. I brew my own red wine vinegar and made plum wine from my own fruit. I write about organic gardening, and get a kick out of creating meals from my own homegrown foods. I've also kept chickens for egg production for many years. Which brings me to my story of the day I've had.

My five chickens were not laying anymore. An egg a day is the norm, but these girls were getting old, (over a year is an old bird) and all they were good for was their manure which I composted and used as a great fertilizer, and eating a lot of expensive chicken feed. The dilemma was how to get rid of them. I'm not supposed to keep them here in the city, anyway. So, throwing them in the trash wasn't an option. I'd have to kill them somehow, too. What would any farm girl do in this case? Butcher them for the soup pot, of course!

First, I lacked the basic knowledge of the killing and butchering of any animal. Store chickens came in tidy plastic bags; neatly machine eviscerated, chilled and labeled at 99 cents a pound. The only other people I knew that kept chickens were a Hmong family down the street. The Hmong were minding their own business in the mountains of Vietnam and Laos when war disrupted their agrarian lifestyle. We were friendly, having traded vegetables, herbs and chili peppers. They were a family of eight, as opposed to us three here. They HAD to grow their own food.

Ker and her husband warmly welcomed my request to trade them three birds for the butchering of my two. "In my country," she spoke softly in her broken English, "we butch(er) pig, cow, chicken, all animal. I do this by (my)self all time."

Looking around in their spacious backyard I counted about two dozen young chickens being raised as meat birds. They were kept neatly in a cage under a tin roof. Her husband was bringing out two large roosters that were kept separately from each other in a dark wooden box just inside their patio. They were fighting birds. Fathering, too.

"We keep in house in morning cause too much noise for neighbors." she explained. Still at 7:30 am they crowed enough to make me wonder if anyone living near them ever complained. Apparently not.

Ker and her husband set to work as I watched, standing nearby. First, a large pot of water was put on to boil. She had an outdoor burner set up under where a wok the size of a small table sat. I wished I had such a set up! I'm lucky enough to get my wok just hot enough to sauté some beef on my stove. She turned up the gas and had the water boiling very quickly.

Now, getting my feisty birds from my backyard run to their house was no easy task. I had Allen out there inside the cage chasing each one down, squawking, flapping wings and raising plenty of dust, until we secured each one separately in double paper bags. Chickens calm down in the dark, but I didn't want one tearing out of its bag and getting loose in the trunk of my car.

Ker undid one bag at a time and as her husband held it's feet and wings. She simply slit the throat and let it bleed into a bowl covered with tin foil with a hole pierced to let just the blood drain in. In less time than I thought, the bird would struggle one last time and relax in his hands, obviously dead. This is where I was surprised. A number of other people I spoke with about butchering my birds all commented on how the chickens would be killed with a snap of their necks and then they would run around headless or flop about madly. None of that today. The killing was humane and quiet. Almost kosher if a rabbi was near by!

The birds were dipped into the boiling water and the messiest part began;the feather removal. Now, I was grateful to be just observing here. I didn't grow up in a country where if you were hungry you had to kill what you wanted to eat. This was second nature to Ker. Even the kids helped on butchering days. They sat on small wooden seats no more than a few inches off the ground. Each chicken was quickly plucked and set aside until they were all finished. The feet were cut off, not to be used because the age of the birds, but otherwise they would have kept them for the soup pot.

Out came the coolest looking knife I had ever seen; long and curved, with gold trim around the handle. It was beautiful. Ker's husband had brought the knife from Thailand. He kept it sharp with the stones he brought out to show me. I told him about my expensive German knives and how dull they had become. I was quickly dispatched home to bring them back for him to sharpen.

They meticulously removed every feather from each carcass. Ker reached into the mouths of the birds and cut out their tongues. "Not good." Enough said for me.

They split the birds open at the chest and their deft fingers pulled the guts out neatly and intact. Machine evisceration often punctures the intestines, spreading I-coli and poisoning the chicken meat. Not in this case. My trust for their work grew. The Hmong do not eat the livers, but they saved an organ that I could not identify; possibly a gizzard or something. That was fine;I didn't want any, nor did I care to take home the birds' heads, which they kept. Everything was washed by hose water. Hands, knives and the birds themselves were washed off continuously.

Ker packed my chickens in plastic bags, and put hers into her freezer. We walked back outside where she picked me a baggie-full of the tiniest red chilies I'd ever seen. Mint and lemongrass grew everywhere around their home. The remains of a squash or melon plant lay on the ground mounded with compost made from chicken manure and wood shavings. Unlike my garden, her plants grew where haphazardly, and her chili bushes were waist high.

Inside her spartan home she opened a bottle of her chilies ground by hand with salt, cilantro, and fish sauce. I had to taste this stuff. I soon regretted that I took more than a tiny morsel of it. It was hot and salty, used primarily to season meat in the frying pan. I was certainly going to make some of this stuff to impress my chili-eating friends!

Her husband had been at work sharpening my knives. He had fashioned a wooden setup to hold his sharpening stones that fit perfectly over the stainless steel sink. He tested the sharpness by holding each knife at the back of his head and feeling if it cut his hair off fast enough!

What I had brought them for butchering didn't seem like a fair trade to me. I gave them one of my small pumpkins and a bottle of my plum wine. It would have been rude for me to offer money at this point. They knew how impressed I was with their skills. Framed on a wall in my living room is a square piece of cloth hand appliquéd and embroidered in the traditional Hmong fashion. It's a beautiful piece of handcrafting. They are beautiful people.

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