Holding the head in one hand to stretch the neck, I quickly cut the throat of the chicken with a very sharp knife. Blood will spurt out immediately if the cut is proper. The goal is to quickly bleed out the bird. Cutting the head off completely is a possibility, guaranteeing that the bird dies instantly. With the brain unattached to the body, the chicken as we know it is dead. A steady hand is needed to keep the chicken in the cone, because its body will continue to try to right itself for a few seconds. While I’ve never let a bird run around with its head chopped off, the body does certainly continue with motor functions, so the adage appears to be rooted in a real natural phenomenon.
I hold on to the legs of the chicken. Partly to keep the bird secure, but also because it fascinates me. The talons of a chicken, especially a big old rooster, are tremendous. Scaly, fierce, with a sharp claw on some roosters, they bring to mind the old fantasy books. I think of such sharp-clawed chickens as characters in a C. S. Lewis story, J. R. R. Tolkien beasts, not of this world. As the head is cut, the feet will come alive, full of vigor. And then, moments later, as the muscles relax, they flex out, once, twice, maybe three times, and then go limp. Holding on to these feet as you feel the life drain out is a powerful experience. I can’t say that I like it, that I enjoy it, but that I respect it.
Once the bird has finished in the cone, it is transferred to the hot water. The goal is to cook the feathers adequately to release their hold on the bird. An adult chicken is covered in feathers, feathers designed to fluff up and keep the cold out, the water out. They are not prone to get wet, so a thorough dunking to adequately wet the bird is called for. Birds also float, so dunking with a stick is encouraged. Maybe thirty seconds underwater, a quick test of a feather, and then the bird is pulled from the water; longer dunking may be needed if the feathers do not release.
This is the beginning of the less-than-glamorous part of raising chickens. The birds, especially those meat birds whose oversized breasts drag on the floor of the chicken coop, are less than clean. Many birds will be caked with manure. With a dunking in a pot full of hot water, the manure will be released, fouling the water, fouling the air. There is nothing charming or quaint to say about this.
If the feathers are adequately loosened by the hot water, then the chicken can be hung for plucking. Plucking a bird on the flat I find difficult; hanging works best. I tie a rope around one foot and hang the bird from a nice height. The ground beneath is covered in paper. Some feathers are easy and simple to pluck, others most difficult. Legs, breasts, thighs and back are mostly a breeze; the tail is a bit challenging but gives in with a tug. The wings are different. The powerful wings have large, formidable feathers that are well anchored. As the wings themselves carry little meat on them, I skip them entirely. The ratio of work to reward is simply not there.
The large feathers come off first, then the smaller and then smaller still, until the bird is essentially bald, except the wing feathers hanging down rather forlornly. A second or third dunking may be necessary to get to the bald bird stage.
Chickens are relatively easy to pluck—a joy, you might even say, compared to geese. Geese have feathers the size of ballpoint pens and the feathers stick in as if they were glued. Ducks are easier than geese, although a bit more of a challenge than chickens. I have often thought I would save the duck or goose feathers for use in house pillows, but with the feathers collecting beneath the dead bird, near steaming water stinking of excrement, it simply doesn’t feel like a Martha Stewart moment.
One by one the bald birds are brought into the kitchen for further cleaning. If the plucking was tedious, the gutting is downright distasteful, although thankfully quick. In a nod to our personalities, I generally have Jorge kill and pluck the birds; he is the most thoughtful and takes his time with a task. I reserve the gutting and cleaning for myself; I like tasks that are quick, even if dirty.
Gutting a chicken, or a duck or goose, for that matter, is essentially the same as gutting a cow or a pig. The goal is to remove all the entrails, leaving none in the cavity, saving the best parts and keeping the manure in the intestines where it belongs and not on the meat.
The first cut is to encircle the bung of the chicken to remove the intestines in whole. Once the bung is released, then a larger cut will open up the cavity adequately for your hand to enter. The intestines will immediately fall out with a bit of a tug. They will be attached to the gizzard, although the tender guts will generally tear before releasing the stubborn gizzard. The guts are immediately dropped in a bucket to be sent to the pigs at the end of this task.
The guts that we seek to preserve are the hearts, gizzards and livers. All else is uninteresting and unnecessary. The livers of a bird are out of scale with the size of the animal and also quite tender. Large, a silky caramel color, the liver is gently pulled out of the cavity. It most likely will tear in the process, but no matter. The bile sac is a small bag of chartreuse liquid that is unfortunately tethered to the liver. The liquid is bitter and most undesirable. While the outer skin of the sac is tender and easily ruptured, with a bit of delicate knife work the livers can be extracted for later culinary use.
The gizzards are the most phenomenal part of a bird. There are few parts of animals that I can gush about, but chicken gizzards are one of those. Like a great beefsteak, but steak seems so very predictable compared to a chicken gizzard.
The gizzard of a mature bird is approximately two and a half inches long, and as much as two inches across—similar in shape to a kidney but flattened a bit. The gizzard is hard and feels like a hard rubber ball, with little give. It feels out of place in the guts of a bird. With dramatic white and dark brown crenellations along the flattened side, up close gizzards give off the impression of an abstract painting.
When I have finished cleaning the outside of the gizzard and hold it in my hand, I marvel at it. I take a knife and cut in along the center of the outer edge—the longer side of the kidney-shaped organ. I always use an older knife, as it will be immediately dulled. The gizzard is filled with small rocks and gravel and as the knife cuts it, it slides against those pebbles. When the gizzard has almost been cut in half—butterflied, if you will—then it can be splayed open to show all its glory.
I take the now-opened organ to the sink and begin to rinse out the rocks and bits that were held in the sealed gizzard. The birds use these rocks to grind their food before it passes to the stomach for digestion. A crude system, perhaps, but it appears to work for them.
When the gizzard is laid out flat, it is a tremendous thing. The colors are the colors of an earthy palette: deep reds, almost blue tones, dark browns. The interior texture is crinkled thick leather, unlike the slick firm rubber of its exterior. It is far too beautiful to be hidden in the gut of a chicken, grinding grain.
Once the livers, gizzard and heart are removed, cleaned and cooled down for later use, the wings are quickly chopped off, still retaining their stubborn feathers; the pigs will chomp on them minutes later. After a final rinse, the last bits of errant guts are pulled from the cavity and the bird is cooled down in the refrigerator.
The kitchen counter will be covered with bits of guts, slime and the odd broken bile sac. Only a thorough scrubbing and bleaching will get me ready to think about roast chicken.
In my early years of growing food, I met Suzy, the owner of the local feed store. I would go in to buy dog food and quiz her on how to raise chickens. One Sunday afternoon I suggested to Suzy that I wanted to raise chickens so that I could go out into the yard, grab a bird, clean it and roast it up for dinner. “Wouldn’t that just be a lovely thing?” I mused. She quickly set me straight. She raised birds for meat, and had for years. Once a year she and her husband slaughtered four dozen birds, plucked and cleaned them all. The birds were then wrapped and frozen for Sunday dinners later. She let me know that after spending the day cleaning chickens I would have no interest in eating one that night. I felt terribly green, and was rather embarrassed. Although today it wouldn’t bother me to
clean and cook in the same afternoon, the meat is far more tender if left to settle for at least twenty-four hours in the cooler, if not longer.
When the memory of chicken guts has receded, the birds can be cooked up. A great roasted bird is the perfect farm dinner. It is simple, of the earth and satisfying. When the golden, crispy bird comes out of the roasting oven, all of the plucking and cleaning is forgotten; only the rich, moist chicken matters.
For chickens, nothing beats roasting. For ducks, a simple confit is perfect. French in origin, the basic technique of confit is to preserve meat by slowly cooking it in its own fat. The goal is to keep the meat usable through the difficult winter months after the animals have been slaughtered in the late fall. Beyond simple preservation, the confit technique results in absolutely delicious meat.
Ducks follow the seasons. They are born in the spring when the chills of winter have lapsed, and the grass has begun to grow in the warmth of spring. Through the summer they fatten on grass, and in the fall on the ripening grain. As the season cools, the ducks begin to fatten, to gain an insulating layer to protect themselves through the long cold winters. We take advantage of nature by bringing in ducks from the hatchery in the early spring, raising them through the spring and summer and then slaughtering them in the late fall. By October they have grown to mature size and have a respectable amount of rich fat.
When the ducks are gutted and plucked and chilled, they are ready to butcher. A chilled duck is a marvel: firm from the hard fat, full of muscle and easy to cut. First the rosy breasts are removed from the rib cage and set aside. Then the legs and thighs are removed. Two delectable morsels of meat, each the size and shape of an oyster, lie on either side of the back, and they must be included.
All that’s left is a carcass. Any fat that can be harvested from the carcass can be taken at this time. The vast majority will lie around the vent where the guts were removed. Large clumps of hard yellow fat should be found ready for the claiming. Those bits of fat are collected and melted slowly in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan with a bit of water on the bottom to prevent sticking.
The remaining picked carcasses still contain lovely fat. Halve them and place on a large sheet tray in a hot oven. Let brown till a nice caramel. Not so that they are burnt skeletons, but gently roasted and still having a bit of moisture to them. Pull the tray from the oven gently; the tray should be filled with more rendered duck fat. Tilt the tray so that one corner is lowered into the saucepan on top of the stove with the first bit of fat-rendering going on. Drain the tray completely.
Toss the carcasses in a stockpot, cover with cool water and a bit of aromatic herbs. Bring to a slow simmer and make a bit of stock. When the stock has simmered for two or three hours, drain and chill. On the surface will be another bit of fat. The fat that has collected on the stock can be added to the duck fat that was rendered earlier.
While the stock is simmering and the fat rendering, season the legs and thighs. The classic seasoning is salt, bay and fresh thyme. The classic technique is to lay the legs/thighs fat-side down, meat-side up on a large nonmetal tray. Liberally sprinkle the meat with coarse salt, and then I was always taught to lay fresh bay leaves and large sprigs of thyme on top of the duck. I never really understood this and thought it more perfunctory than realistic. I remember coming up with the idea of taking the thyme and fresh bay leaves and grinding them in a spice mill with the coarse salt. The result is a beautiful chartreuse salt: vibrant, full of flavor and more likely to be absorbed by the duck. I thought I had truly come up with something new until I later saw it in a Thomas Keller cookbook. Even though I’m not the father of green salt, I still use it to good effect regularly. Cover the duck, leave in the refrigerator overnight to season and return to the stock-simmering and the fat-rendering.
Twenty-four hours later the ducks are seasoned, the stock has been strained and the fat rendered. Pull the leg and thigh pieces from the cooler, brush the salt off completely and towel-dry. Place them all in an ample, heavy-lidded casserole dish and pour enough of the duck fat to cover completely. Reserve whatever fat is remaining, if any.
Slowly heat the casserole on the top of the range until it begins to very slowly simmer. Keep the flame low enough and steady enough to maintain that delicate simmer for hours, until the duck is fork-tender and close, but not quite, to falling off the bone. Then allow to cool to room temperature.
Transfer the duck legs and thighs into a small stoneware crock that can hold them. Melt the duck fat if it has begin to solidify, strain out any bits and pour it over the duck legs to completely cover. The goal is to seal out the air entirely, preserving the duck in its own fat. The duck will have rendered more fat during its cooking, so there should be adequate fat to work with. Place the crock, with a heavy lid to discourage nibbling, in the cellar for safekeeping. With luck it will be forgotten until the depths of winter.
When the duck is desired, bring the crock up into room temperature, or possibly onto the back of the range. When the fat has softened adequately, reach in and grab the meat. Melt the remaining fat, strain and save in the cooler for future projects; the fat will get saltier with each use, but can be reused.
A great way to use the preserved duck is in a salad: sweet greens, a bit of bitter lettuce, thinly sliced winter pears, honey, apple cider vinegar and the precious strips of duck confit.
A lovely thing happened in the process of finding a working model for the farm. I tried growing different foods here: vegetables, fruits, goats, cows, ducks and chickens. Although the goal was to find a way to keep the farm operating without returning to the city to work, I discovered that my eventual farm would not just raise one crop, but rather produce a variety of different foods alongside what would become the primary product—cheese.
The food that I created here—the duck confit, the roasted chickens, the roasted leg of lamb, the aged cheese—was good. Really good. Controlling more and more aspects of the food made the quality higher. Slaughtering the chickens myself, although certainly not my favorite task, assured me that the chickens would be tasty, and also prepared me for slaughtering larger animals—sheep, goats and eventually pigs and cows. The more I enjoyed the food from this farm, the more animals I wanted to raise, and to raise well.
Eleven
Pigs
Pigs are the centerpiece of many a traditional farm. Rivaled only perhaps by cows as the symbol of the farm, pigs are perfect farm animals for a small operation. They consume all of the waste a farm and its kitchen can produce, and when slaughtered, all of their parts can be utilized for feeding the farmer throughout the year. We could not design a more perfect system for transforming the wastes of the farm: old milk and soured cream, vegetables at the end of the growing season, the apple pressings from making cider and the wastes from slaughtering chickens, lambs and calves, are transformed into beautiful hams, bacon and pork chops.
These porcine creatures have real personality: they are smart, attentive, aggressive, stubborn and charming. I have been furious with pigs when trying to move them, and find them insanely lovable at other times. On a beautiful day when the pigs are lying in the sun, their large bellies splayed out, they are wondrous, and it is then that I forget the agonizing days when they have escaped or flipped their water troughs over again and again.
Pigs are unique in that you can sense that they are looking at you and thinking. The cows, the sheep, even my most beloved dogs, certainly look me in the eye, but there really isn’t anything there. The house dogs are hoping that they will go for a ride, the cows looking for more hay, the sheep don’t even have such an ability. Pig eyes, however, show something more.
I generally try to steer away from anthropomorphizing farm animals. When people describe a mother sheep as “just like my sister the way she takes care of her kids” or some such rattling, I assume they have very little experience with sheep. They want animals to be family members, not beasts that will be slaughtered in time for the family barbecue. I make an exception in naming my cows, but r
ecognize that they are animals first, not humans or friends. Pigs I never name; they are only here for their eventual role as meat.
Pigs make me wonder, though: is there a soul lurking beneath that bristly hide? I tend to think that yes, they are certainly more intelligent than a sheep or a cow, but no, they are not capable of anything more complex than trying to get more food and water and shelter from me. One possibility is that their eyes are just more evolved. The actual eye, the shape and the cornea and the eyelash looks very much like a human’s eye. The eye of a cow is larger than ours, rounded and without depth. I look into that eye and see nothing more than a blank stare coming back from the cow. I look into the eye of a pig and perceive a person dressed up in a pig suit staring at me.
I wanted pigs at my farm more than any other animal. I yearned to make prosciutto out of the legs of my own pigs. Eventually I did, but it took more time than I had anticipated. I had trouble finding pigs. This was only a decade ago, and yet it might as well have been a hundred years in the past; little had changed in pig availability over those many years until recently. There was really no good system for finding items like pigs before the introduction of Craigslist.com. As a method for people in small rural communities to buy and sell farm equipment and animals, Craigslist is unsurpassed. It is immediate, free and reaches out to many people efficiently. I used to have to go to a feed store and read what were in effect weeks-old postcards announcing baby pigs for sale posted on the bulletin board. By the time I found the notice and called the farm, the pigs were most likely long gone. Craigslist has changed all that. I can now quickly find specific breeds of pigs or sheep or cows that are for sale and know a few hours later if they are still available. Old farming equipment, such as tractor parts, is equally well served. I wouldn’t be surprised if small farming in America will have a renaissance because of this simple technological advancement. A Web site that was never intended by its designers to aid in the sale of disc harrows and baby Toulouse geese has greatly improved small agriculture in America.
Growing a Farmer Page 19