My first day at Whiskey Creek Farm, Lori had me working in the butcher shop. Because Lori doesn’t only raise chickens and have a big garden, she also has a small farm butcher shop where she butchers mainly chickens, but also ducks and turkeys, two days a week. Farmers come with big crates full of birds, and leave with boxes full of meat.
It was kind of a shock, starting the work there. Not necessarily a bad one, though. More that it took a while to get used to. The smell of cleaner and raw chicken meat, the chilliness of the place, the humidity. Everything being so clean.
I didn’t work with the actual killing. That was done in another room. What I did was to take the butchered, head-, foot- and featherless bird and pluck possible feather ends from the skin. Then, I handed the bird to the next person, who would empty out the innards and cut off the neck. Last, the birds would go to the meat inspector, who checks so that the chicken is big enough and seems healthy. Inbetween the different stops in the process, the birds lie in big tubs of cold water.
I’m not squeamish. Handling still warm, dead chicken doesn’t bother me, even when I hear their last screams in the room next door. Even when considering that I might have been feeding this particular bird, chasing it into the barn, just the day before. It just the way of life. Didn’t know that I would feel this way, but it feels kind of good knowing that I can handle death in this very concrete sense.
What eventually started making me feel slightly uncomfortable was the smell and the strain on my hands. Lori’s chickens are big and fat, carrying them and turning them to find all the remaining feather ends does put a strain on your arms and hands, especially after seven hours of work. When the last bird was finally plucked, I was exhausted.
I was later told that this wasn’t a normal day. Usually, they butchered about two hundred birds a day. Today, they had had to do four hundred, due to some double bookings. That’s why Lori had asked me to help in the shop. Normally, she wouldn’t have wwoofers there. But really, I liked the experience. I will never become a butcher, but having worked for one day in a butcher shop, I atleast have that experience. For one day, it was exciting.
Katja Malmborg 