NH Homesteader's journal

DH apparently thought he only had to do 5 of our birds. Even though we talked about it like a thousand times. And he's grumpy. Think he's remembering how much he hates doing chickens. It's not gonna be a fun day.

AND he told me he would catch the chickens last night so I went to bed. Yeah, he didn't catch the chickens. Can't even find 3 of the cull hens. AND his friend who I hate just said one of his friends is dropping off some birds to process also. Without talking to DH about it. Good thing it's his equipment and his house huh????

Angry!!

Also we need to butcher our pig soon. She's got leg issues and is having issues getting around. Sigh.

By which I mean our meat pig, not our breeder. Our breeder is lovely!

Gotta find a nice way to tell our friend his new boar is throwing piglets with leg issues. In the case he hasn't noticed... This is 2 from the same litter.

Oh wow....yep...looks like it's gonna be a day! I'm not sure what it is that's so crappy about butchering chickens - but it just is, lol! I've never done it where I didn't end up covered with blood and guts and nasty chicken feather water.... It's just a PIA - BUT - I sure do like the outcome... So, ya do whatcha gotta do.

HOWEVER - when someone just thinks it's ok to drop something off for you to do... not so cool! Maybe your DH can tell the friend of the friend that he can use ya'lls equipment if he butchers ya'lls chickens for ya, lol!

How's your DH's back? Might be part of his 'not so eagerness' to get this done.

Stinks about the pig. Would have been nice to get a little more meat on her. Shame about that leg and the boar.

DH is still sore but better than he was. He just hates doing birds! It's gross! We have all but 2 of ours done, haven't found them yet. Those ones are going to be soup so we can catch them later this week and skin them if we have to.

Actually we are not doing birds with or for other people after this year (one more batch to do-our 19 meat birds and the friend's turkeys). We are going to tell people they can rent our trailer. Going rate here is $50-100/weekend (plus refundable deposit). If it comes back dirty we keep your deposit. Just doing our own from now on. It's a giant PIA and it never is really worth it.

We'll see when DH has time to do the pig. She's little and will not be as much meat as we had hoped but I'm not going to make her suffer so we get more meat. Less money we have to put in also. He'll want to do it as soon as he has time, she's gotten a lot worse in the past few days.

Good idea on renting the trailer. Still brings income but not much more work - I like it! Poor piggy...

Caught one... Only one straggler and she's in the woods!

DH and his friends are doing 43 chickens today. So. Many. Chickens.

DH caught the last straggler. 44 chickens and done. DH is cleaning the processing trailer now. Woohoo! 9 less mouths to feed and DH did some extra chickens for other friends, and made $70, and our friend who helped paid for propane and ice. Not a horrible day!