Our New Hampshire hosts slaughtered their meat chickens yesterday. Reports Campbell, Michelle’s 18-year-old son:
On the first two we made mistakes. Josh tried to do it with his hands, but couldn’t, so he switched to a cleaver instead. I used the cleaver but it took three tries. Then we switched to the ax, which got blood on my face.
I was back at the farm today for the first time in a few weeks and spent time watching the pigs. They are warily curious, especially in contrast to the sheep pasturing next to them. Sheep seem stupid and scared of everything, always making sure of the space between themselves and visitors. The pigs follow visitors around their pen, sticking their snouts through the fence, shoving their way closer, climbing on each other for a better view.
The longer I’m away from the farm, the easier I think it will be to slaughter my pig when her time comes. And every time I go back to the farm and watch the pigs running and snorting and sniffing, I’m snapped back to the reality of how emotionally hard it will be.
On the left is the 36-pound tom turkey carcass. On the right, for scale, is my 33-and-a-half-pound 2-year-old. Her arms are in her armpits because she is doing a turkey impression.
Our hosts left ordering a turkey to the last minute, and finding one was made slightly more troublesome by the need to find a local, humanely raised bird. When Michelle started calling around earlier this week, lots of farms didn’t have any birds left.
She finally reached a lady who did.
“I don’t think you’re going to want it,” she said. It was 36 pounds. (That’s three pounds more than my two-year-old.) And even with 23 people on hand to eat Thanksgiving dinner — an estimated pound of pre-cooked flesh per person — that seemed like overkill.
The turkey had to be brined in a green Coleman chest cooler. At 15 minutes per pound, it would need nine hours to cook. Josh installed an additional oven just to roast the turkey.
Still, after we picked up the bird and were headed home, Josh started to have second thoughts. Maybe we should have taken the 39-pound turkey the farmer had offered.
Update
I’m saddened learn that our turkey was nowhere near the size that one family found. That would be 72 pounds, which bested their previous record of 47.
We’re just outside Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for the week, staying in a house that has been in a state renovation for a year or so (and will be for another five). The walls are naked (and not in the no-art-hanging way), the floors plywood and walking around without shoes is a bad idea. The only heat comes from fireplaces.
It’s the home of my cousin Josh (he of the Maryland crabs), the retired cook and Culinary Institute of America alum. And while living in a constantly morphing space has it’s drawbacks, it is fantastic for cooking.
Right now, Josh is installing a new counter next to the sink over the used Sub-Zero wine storer, adding a second oven just for the 36-pound turkey (more later), and hooking up a second refrigerator for all the bits and pieces.
Josh and Michelle are raising their own chickens for both meat and eggs. (They originally got the birds to save money, but quickly realized that it was costing them more to raise their own. They don’t get government subsidizes.) The meat birds are still too small to slaughter, but the eggs’ yolks are a vibrant orange instead of the pale yellow of regular supermarket eggs (including the cage-free, organic and free-range ones).
The coolest feature of the kitchen, such as it is, is the built-in wood-fired oven. Our first night we had pizza in it and last night’s roasted chicken and the skin came out a beautiful brown. I’m now planning — with or without anyone’s consent — to tear apart our 1950s ranch to enlarge our kitchen.
Longtime-reader, first-time typer NOYFB writes:
“How many potlucks have you been to in the past 5 years?”
Well, for the last three Super Bowls, I went to parties where admission was apparently a container of seven-layer dip. (It’s sort of like those dances in junior high where admission was a box of tissues.) So I guess three. But I’ll betcha I’d have stratospheric numbers if I was a member of a religious group.
I’ve become facinated by Wooly Pigs. The blog by Washington pig farmer Heath Putnam about his herd of Berkshires and rare Mangalitsa hogs. His blog offers his thoughts on slaughter (he worried about what might happen to meat of the pigs he was slaughtering for the French Laundry) while his farm’s site contains more information about rare pig breeds than you could ever want.
Everyone here in the Midwest has a crock pot.
The big-box store down the road has an entire isle dedicated to slow cookers. OK, that’s not entirely true; the slow cookers actually creep around the corner to the next isle, too.
Filled with meat, canned tomatoes, more salt and pepper (inevitably pre-ground), crock pots appear at every potluck. (Power strips are often employed for larger gatherings to ensure electricity for everyone.) And no matter the crock pot’s contents, it always looks — and tastes — identical.
One exception: if, instead of ground pork, it’s holding Li’l Smokies and barbeque sauce, then it does looks different, even if it tastes about the same.
OK, seriously, this is not the Michael Pollan blog. But I read (and abstracted) his Sunday New York Times op-ed on the farm bill. It’s a good, passionately written primer on the bill and worth a look from any one who eats. That, I assume, would be you.
For another look, check out Michael Grunwald’s take, ‘Down on the Farm,’ in Time. He points out how rediculous our subsidy system is when “it redistributes our taxes to millionaire farmers as well as to millionaire “farmers” like David Letterman, David Rockefeller and the owners of the Utah Jazz.”
On a related note, it speaks to the sad state of journalism — let alone food journalism — in Iowa that we’re getting scooped by a former New Yorker living in Berkley and a guy from Washington, D.C.
I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and came away with, I though, I good picture of how the Farm Bill works against us.
As much as I hate to cite a single author in two consecutive posts, Micheal Pollan’s bookdid a lot to spark foodie — and media — interest in the Farm Bill. (I’m too lazy to link to him or his book. Go to the previous post if you’re that in the dark.) And since the discrepence between what that legislation subsidizes and what is in the public’s best interest has been covered in detail.
But the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine makes it ever clearer with one simple visual. On the right, the USDA’s Food Pyramid. On the left, what the US government subsidizes through direct payments to farmers and programs like school lunch and food stamps.
It puts what Nadine Fisher told me (notably “I don’t know that the Food Stamp Program has adapted to anything.”) into a whole new light for me. Yes, that teeny tiny point on top is for fruits and vegetables.
Via Serious Eats
