Last Saturday was the end of the turkey's living life. They now will live out the remainder of their exsistance in our freezers until they are consumed.
My brother and dad and my brothers father -in-law were in charge of killing them and de-feathering and gutting. I and mom were in charge of packaging and grinding up 2 birds for ground turkey.
My brother and dad were surprised how strong the birds were. Well duh, these arent spring chickens we're dealing with. For the most part killing them went on without a hitch until the last bird, when Nick didn't quite have it killed by ringing its neck and when they chopped the head off....blood sprayed everywhere....but i guess one bird out of 10 isn't too bad???
Plucking is an area that needs improvement. We did the water dips and had a machine to take the feathers out easier but I found it messed up the skin too much and one bird even lost its skin -completely but mom took that bird and we ate it on Monday -tasted like turkey! So if anyone has any tips on an easier plucking method I'm all ears.
Gutting went well too. Except dad isn't as tough as he says he is and was a little green when he decided to step in when Nick (my brother) took a break.
We also had the "help" of a couple young folk, Nick's in-laws were babysitting a 8 and 6 year old and they jumped right in to help and jumped from one thing to another. They were right into the whole process and was quite a learning adventure for them. They played with the guts separating the organs, playing with the leg tendons to make the foot open and close. Their parents thanked us for letting them help out saying its important to understand where our food comes from, which is something I agree with.
I forgot that raw meat smell was like when we were grinding them up in my kitchen...grinding went well with the help of my kitchen aid stand mixer with the meat grinder attachment. We did loose a tad bit of meat when mom used a wooden spoon and it got chewed up in the grinder...oops. And I only gagged one when I was trying to remove a blood cot from one of the bird's legs -one of my birds had been limping the last couple of days...I had to call one of the guys in to butcher the clot out.
All in all it was a sucessful turkey raising project. Our largest bird was 18 pounds and smallest 12 pounds, most averaged 16 pounds. And because of 3 birds dying and our start up costs the birds cost us $3.21 a pound. Next year we should be down around 2.20 a pound mark, which is a decent price for fresh turkeys around here.
