Easy Chicken Harvesting

 As I have previously mentioned, my chickens (currently all  layers) sometimes transition to the dinner table, one way or another.  Sometimes I sell them.  Most people, when they process a chicken, pluck it, carefully evacuate the abdominal cavity, and refrigerate or freeze it whole.  There are innumerable videos online of how to do this, such as this one from Justin Rhodes.

Plucking is a barrier.  I have done it--by hand, as I do not have a plucker.  I did not scald (I have done only one to five birds at a time).  I gutted the rooster in the post linked above, and I kept the skin on for the leg and thigh quarters.  Boneless skinless was the most natural way to process the breasts.

After that first bird, the solution that works for me with chickens is skinning and parting them out, leaving the guts in the abdomen.  Two very helpful videos on this are provided by the Sage and Stone Homestead and the Sarah Lynn Homestead. In my experience, about 75% of the hassle and upwards of 50% of the time associated with chicken processing is linked to plucking.  I like crispy skin on drumsticks as much as anyone, but I can give that up to save the effort and time. This is even more true when the parts are canned. Yes, automated chicken pluckers are fast, but they require scalding and they're expensive.  For my scale, they aren't worth it.

I can go from a live chicken to parted-out breasts and thigh/leg quarters in 20-30 minutes when following the practices in the videos above.  Given the amount of meat I get from my layers, that's a decent ROI for the time.

Older chickens can (should) be canned bone-in, and they turn out tender (trying to eat a two-year-old rooster that has been oven-baked is masochistic; I tried it; the flavor was okay, but my teeth hurt the next day).

Younger birds can be oven-baked and they turn out fine.

 This was a five-month-old barred rock rooster. I basted it with a simple mix of:

4 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon of thyme, sage, and salt

It was tender.  Coming out of the oven, it looked like this:

 

That's perfectly decent.  I didn't miss the skin at all. I don't know that I'll ever raise chickens primarily for meat, but going forward, any that I do process, I plan to skin them and part them out at the time of butchering.  It's vastly easier than the alternative.
 

 

Pruning the Muscadines, 2025

 Muscadines flower and set fruit on new growth, so annual pruning helps ensure that abundant new growth will yield a good harvest.  There's one caveat: once the sap starts to run, they'll leak sap profusely when cut. It can go on for days.  Pruning earlier in the dormant season is helpful to avoid that, but they won't be noticeably hurt by the leakage.  With the best of intentions, I plan to do this at the end of January, then the realities of January weather deter me.  When it's 45 and windy, it's not going to happen.  So this year, the end of February and beginning of March it was.  I did not prune them last year, so there was a lot to remove.

 

The pictures show the before / after for my Ison, which is easily the most vigorous and productive of the plants that I have.

The sap was running, especially with the last ones pruned, but it wasn't too bad: it stopped after an hour or so.  I have seen it much worse.  Now it's just a waiting game until they break dormancy.

The Delawares Are Laying

 I got some new chicks last fall--hatched at the end of September.  A prior batch of Delawares from the same hatchery, hatched at the same time of the year, (Cackle) started laying in mid-Februrary.  Right on schedule, these are starting to do the same.

 

Things got off to a slow start, but they are rapidly ramping up.  My peak production months are typically April and May, and by then they should be laying almost one egg per day each.  The size always starts off small--35 grams puts the one above solidly in the peewee class--but they rapidly increase.  Some are inching into the small category after just a couple of weeks.

 

I sold off the prior batch, but their production held up very well through three seasons of laying.  At the time I sold them, they had just gone through a molt, and were just beginning to lay eggs again on the other side.  I found someone who was okay with getting old hens (and a matching old rooster) because he'd had some predator losses.  I hope they're working out well in their new home.