I hope everyone had a GREAT Thanksgiving!! This last weekend, we had a wonderful volunteer turn-out and got through harvesting 44 turkeys, 12 chickens, and 9 roosters in record time. We started about 6:00 AM getting things set up. It was dark and COLD… about 28 degrees outside.
In total, we probably had about 20 people help throughout the day. THANK YOU!! Without you, it would not have been possible.
Here is a brake-down of how the process goes. First, the turkey is caught in the pasture. A rafting strap is put around its feet, and they are carried (or sometimes dragged) down one at a time to the butcher station.
Next, the bird is placed headfirst into a killing cone. The neck is slit, and the bird bleeds out. The cone is required so the bird is not able to flap its wings while dying. When the wings aren’t held tight, they will often break them and create a bird that doesn’t present well.
Once the blood has drained, the bird is dipped into 145-degree scalding water for about 2 minutes and 15 seconds. This is to loosen the feathers. It is then moved into a plucker. This piece of equipment pulls out most of the feathers. The feathers that are left behind are plucked by hand.
Picture of QAQC table
At this point, the bird is gutted. The heart, liver, gizzard, and neck are washed and put into a plastic bag. They are put inside the bird’s cavity before bagging. The intestines are discarded. The head and feet are cut off and are later used in making bone broth.
Once the bird is cleaned out and stuffed with the innards bag, they go through one last quality control check for feathers. They are finally placed into a large food-grade plastic bag, weighed, and labeled. They are not brined by us, so we stress this step to buyers that we recommend it.
This year, we had birds range from 16 to 42 pounds. Most are in the 30-35 pound range. All birds were placed in the walk-in refrigerator until buyers picked them up. Greg & I were left with 13 birds this year which is very exciting! Last year, we tried to keep 10, but they were all sold by last-minute buyers. As a result, we aimed higher and get to stalk our freezers with turkey for the year. Our birds will be brined for several days. Then the breasts, drum sticks and wings will be cut off and vacuum-sealed in bags. The rest of the bird’s meat will be pulled off, ground up and sealed into 2-pound bags. We hope to get roughly 350 pounds of useable meat off them. It’s quite the investment in meat, but we generally don’t buy meat from the store. The remaining turkey carcasses are turned into bone broth with the use of our 55-gallon cooking pot.
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