Monthly Archives: July 2010

Culling Chickens

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Seven chickens, it turns out, was a little more than my yard can really handle, and for the past several months, I’ve only been getting 2-4 eggs a day from the bunch. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do — and while I thought about trying to pawn them off on someone else, really, I knew all along that the responsible thing to do was to cull a few of them. (And for all of you Angry Vegans out there, I have heard your arguments, especially in light of my post at Ethicurean about how I don’t consider my chickens pets, and let’s agree to respectfully disagree.)

As I was going back and forth, trying to gather up my courage to actually deal with the situation, one of my older chickens came up lame the other day. They’d been out doing their chicken-y thing in my yard, and when I got the scratch and called out that it was snacktime, one of them was limping badly. This just brought home to me the problems posed by getting chickens when I didn’t know how to humanely kill one. That one was on the list, and now it was in pain, which was the one thing I wanted to avoid all along. I’d read online about wringing necks, but as I looked at the chicken, I was afraid I’d just botch it and hurt it more.

So I put out a couple of calls — to my Egg Lady, and one to Mark Rehder, who runs Farms for Families here in town, and who’d come by this spring to see the coop on a coop tour he was leading. Isabelle got back to me first, or rather, her husband Larry, who came by with their daughter Azalea to show me how to kill a chicken. Larry’s a Vietnam vet, a big gruff guy (and who has the sweetest relationship with Azalea, who is about eight, she and her dad just adore one another) and he showed me how to hold the bird, stretch it out, and quickly and quietly break its neck. It was very humane and over quickly. He did all three for me, cut their heads off, and we hung them from the apple tree. “You can do the rest,” he said. “It’s just like gutting a fish.” Um, sure, I thought as I waved them off.

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So there I was in the backyard with three headless chickens hanging from the apple tree. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I could do this, but I figured I had to try. I put my biggest stockpot on to boil. I dug out the latex gloves I use for painting because I didn’t think I could stick my hand in warm chicken guts without them. I sharpened my knives. And I went online! Where I printed out instructions from these two sites: Cultivating Home, and this one, from Howling Duck Ranch. Thank you internets! Thank you people who posted good, close-up pictures in step-by-step format!

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I set up a folding table (to which I later added a heavy cutting board), put the hose on low and left it to water the plum tree in the meantime, got a bucket with some hot bleach water for a rag and to clean my knives in between chickens, and lined a bucket with a garbage bag. I’d seen my dad and my brother field dress ducks, and of course, during my time with the Mighty Hunter there was even the antelope, but I’d never done it entirely on my own. I was kind of excited too, this was a skill I’d been wanting to learn.

So I put on an apron and went to work. I dunked a chicken in hot water, swished it around, and started plucking feathers — they came off really easily, most of them. It took me 15 minutes maybe, not too long. Then I had to start cutting. The first one, I broke the crop trying to get it out of the neck cavity, which was a little messy, but I just kept hosing everything down, and I was clumsy getting the guts out, but eventually, I had a clean bird with a clean cavity. I didn’t try to save the livers or hearts or gizzards because well, I don’t really like them that much, and I sort of tore things up getting the innards out. Next time. The first bird took the longest, after that I sort of got a system down, and I can see how raising a bunch of meat birds would be useful if you wanted to learn how to kill and butcher. Like anything, they’re skills that come with practice. It took me just over 2 hours to do all three birds, which now reside in the freezer, waiting for the stockpot.

They’re pretty skinny — about 3 pounds each, and they were old birds. I might try a coq au vin though … My sweetie thinks it’s all more effort than it’s worth, in part because he doesn’t like livestock, but even though these were not the most economical chickens I’ll ever cook, I’m really pleased that I learned how to do this. I now know that if the end times come, I can kill, clean and butcher my own chicken. Which is something.

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When Things Break …

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One of the biggest dilemmas I face trying to live small is what to do when things break. I had a trusty old Roper washer that I bought from our friends Chris and Lon when we moved into the townhouse in Hayward all those years ago (10? was it really 10 years ago — must have been). I think we spent $100 for the pair, and Lon and Chris hadn’t paid much more for them new. They were very basic. The washer had hot and cold settings and that was about it. But it worked, and considering I was in my late 30s before I even had a washer dryer of my own, I was pretty happy. The washer broke about a year after I moved up here, and the local fix-it guys put it back together for about a hundred bucks, but when it gave up the ghost last week, I decided that it was probably time to go look for a new one. I mean, another hundred bucks might have kept it going for another four or five years, but it was really old technology, used a lot of water, and well, there comes a time when you have to update.

Of course, at the same time, I needed to replace my brake pads, and got two flat tires. Our local brake and tire shop is great, and fixed the brakes really reasonably, and patched the tires, but it just added to the larger question of the week — when do you patch things, and when do you replace them? For now, the tires are patched, although I’d like new ones with heavier lugs since we’ve been doing so much camping lately, which involves a lot of exploration of logging roads. The flat we got way up on the Stillwater was a real bummer. Fix-a-Flat worked, but it took two cans ($15 bucks total) and we had to drive back down looking for a gas station with a compresser, which burned up half a camping day. Plus a very reasonable $12 bucks each to fix the tires. So for now, the tires are on the patch-it list, and I’m saving some $$ for new ones.

The washer though — the whole new world of washing machines. Even looking at the circulars in the paper made me crazy. Really? People need 125 cycles? Give me a break. And then one lady at the store told me that the front loaders aren’t good if you do small loads, or as she said “if you’re a person who has to do laundry every day.” Every day? One or two shirts? a pair of jeans? no wonder we have an energy crisis. Anyhow, I looked, and then my lovely Sweetheart, who is good at these things, and who has furnished many a rental cabin, went and looked for me. He found a great deal at Lowes, an orphaned washer, with the pedestal drawer thingy, on clearance. It was in the low end of the price range for the fancy new water-and-energy-efficient front loaders, and in the mid-high price range for top loaders. Plus they’d deliver and take away the old one. And there’s the cash-for-clunkers rebate on appliances right now.

So now I have a fancy new front loading washer that looks totally out of place in my shenji basement. But it’s quiet, and I’m testing a load of napkins on it as I type. They say they spin so much water out that it should make my clothesline drying even faster — and maybe in winter I can even restring the basement clothesline.

It’s always such a challenge though. When to buy new, when to buy used, when to patch and fix. In general I tend to patch and patch and patch, and then replace, but even so, I felt sort of bad sending that trusty old Roper off to the landfill. It was a good, basic, no-frills reliable machine. Let’s hope this fancy one with all the electronics lasts as long (I distrust electronics).

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Treadmill Desk Part 2

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This morning as I was driving back into town, Dr. James Levine was on The Splendid Table (or on the podcast I was listening to). Levine is the guy at the Mayo Clinic who invented the treadmill desk, and who has fifteen years of data on the salutary effects of getting up out of your chair. Walking while working is best, but even standing instead of sitting has positive effects.

Here’s a link to a video of him talking about the issue: James Levine on Treadmill Desk

I’ve made a few modifications over the past couple of weeks. I was having trouble with the desktop height. I’d shoved a couple of old pieces of packing foam underneath, but they were squashing, so I asked my Sweetheart, the Carpenter, to take a look. He suggested a two-by-four. So I cut a piece as wide as the desktop, and wedged it underneath. Perfect! The desk is now level, and at the right ergonomic height so that my wrists aren’t bent at that angle that leads to weird symptoms like numbness and tingling etc … I also invested in a wireless keyboard and a mouse for my laptop. It now sits on the shelving unit that holds the monitor, and I increased my real estate on the desktop. There’s really plenty of room for what I need, especially as most of what I do for my day job involves clicking my way through the many steps and screens of our documentation publishing system.

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While I’ve yet to lose huge amounts of weight, I have lost a few pounds. But more important to me — I just feel a lot better. Used to be that by four or five in the afternoon I was drooping and felt gross, now I get to the end of my day and still have enough energy to do stuff in the garden, or work on my new book, or whatever. I can also feel my muscles starting to recover from 15 years of sitting in chairs — what the pilates people call your “core” — in general, I walk about half the day. Sometimes, like right this very minute, at one mph which works when I’m typing, sometimes when I’m doing a lot of clicky work, I’ll crank it up to 2 or 2.5 mph, which feels like a more natural walking pace for me. Although I haven’t quite gotten the hang of typing at that pace yet. If I have a phone meeting I usually pause, because it’s a little too noisy for my speakerphone, and I often find myself standing on the side rails if there’s something I have to really concentrate hard on. But even as a standing desk, I think it’s an improvement over sitting in a chair all day.

So, there it is, my inexpensive treadmill desk. A used treadmill, an old folding table (upon which I wrote my whole first book — I like small desktops), a set of steel shelves, a wireless keyboard and mouse, and a hunk of old 2×4. Good to go. Inexpensive, effective, and for the summer especially, saving on cooling costs since I’m in my basment (which isn’t as dark as it looks in the photos).

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