Butchering Day

Okay, so we did take the easy way out and had our chickens processed at a processing facility. But, the processor did all 42 birds in less than 1 hour, start to finish.

Last ride

 

 

 

 

 

This is what they looked like on their way out this morning. I found myself feeling a little sorry for them. But then I realize that their lives would only get worse if we allowed them to live any longer. Fortunately, we didn't see any broken legs or heart failure in the 7 weeks we had them. Their lives were the best we could give them, lots of food, fresh grass every day, and clean water. Cornish X are different than any chicks I had ever seen. Not that we had a bad experience with them and we will raise them again in the fall.

On the way home

They look beautiful. Clean. Better than any chicken I have seen in the store in forever. I hope they taste as good as they look. I will let you know how they turn out, and will be posting pictures of the packaging process.

Have a great day!
Mae

Chickens & Cherries

The meat chicks are finally ready for butchering. We have decided not to do the processing ourselves. There is a local company here that will do it for us. We will get them processed on Thursday. The processor will do everything in about 40 minutes. We will get them back in an ice water bath. Then they will hang out in the fridge for no more than 24 hours.

While trying to figure out what we would package them in I came across this website: http://poultryshrinkbags.blogspot.com/ which is great for instructions. Then I did a search for poultry shrink bags and found them cheaper here: http://www.nadyaspoultry.com/index.html. I ordered them over the weekend and am hoping they will be here by Friday evening when will package them for the freezer.

Our cherry tree has done well this year. And I was proactive and got to them before the birds did. I made a cherry pie and still had quite a few left over. So I made cherry jelly. I used the juicer attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer and it worked outstandingly. With the jelly I made cherry danishes for breakfast yesterday,

Cherry Danish recipe:
2 pkg. crescent rolls
Cherry jelly
Glaze

Spread out the crescent rolls and separate as you normally would. Put about 1 teaspoon jelly on the wide end of the roll.

Fold over the skinny end as shown in picture above.

Then fold the other end as shown. Crimp the edges together and fold under the pointy ends.

Your packets should look like the ones above. Bake according to crescent roll directions. When brown, remove from oven and glaze.

I used powdered sugar & just enough milk to make a thin glaze.

The finished product. Yummy.

Have a great day!
Mae

Linking to: The Homestead Barn Hop