Day at King's Dominion

Yesterday was Harrison's 8th birthday, so we celebrated by spending the day at King's Dominion! It was so nice to have a one day vacation from moving in and the farm work. We are so grateful that our farm-hands, Hannah and Landon, are able to occasionally milk the cows for us now so we don't have to be home in time for the evening milking! Sheridan riding the carousel:Sheridan was so happy to meet Dora from Dora the Explorer (Although she looks a little nervous in the picture, she is still talking about 'holding Dora's hand' today!). We spent most of the day at King's Dominion's water park, so that is why we are in swimsuits and swim cover-ups!Harrison's favorite ride is the "Flying Eagles":

When we finally got home, we enjoyed Harrison's ice cream birthday cake!

~Meredith

Finally Moved In

On Friday, the cows were moved over to the new farm, so now we are all officially living here! I (Mere) am so glad and especially hopeful that our lives will settle down soon. We (or at least Mama and I) still have the goal of having the interior and exterior complete (unpacked, decorated, painted, landscaped) by July 4 (less than two weeks away!).

Milkings are going slightly faster because the boys are bringing all of the cows (we have 8 cows milking right now) into the barn's stanchions and going from one cow to the next with the milking equipment. We used to have to bring them into our small, makeshift milking barn one at a time.Elliott hooking one up to the milking machine:Gertrude was being stubborn and didn't want to come in with the rest of the girls: Elliott in the temporary clean room processing the milk: Sweet Sheridan sitting in the milking barn:

The cows and calves look so happy grazing on such green pastures! "The Lord will greatly bless His people. Wherever they plant seed, bountiful crops will spring up. Their cattle and donkeys will graze freely." Isaiah 32:20

The Fine Art of Chicken Processing

Elliott has taken over the poultry operation of our farm and is processing (slaughtering) 100 chickens every other week in April-October. Of course we want for him to be very successful in his new endeavor so we are helping him on the processing days, and Oliver and I (Meredith) are also working at a second farmers market on Saturdays to promote his product and boost his sales.

Several friends have expressed interest in seeing the events of a processing, so I am posting pictures from our two most recent processing days (yesterday and two weeks ago).

Elliott's chickens arrive at our town's post office when they are just one day old. They grow as they graze on the pasture until they are eight weeks old, which is when they are ready to be processed. Once moved from the pasture to the processing area, Sullivan and Harrison set them in the killing cones.

Sullivan has recently begun learning how to slit throats from Oliver, who is proud to be known as a "throat slitting expert". ;)Once they die, they are moved to the scalding station. They are repeatedly dipped in the scalding hot water, so the feathers are loosened.
Then they are moved to the plucker.
The plucker rotates the chickens around so that the feathers are completely removed.

Next, the chickens are brought to the eviscerating table. We cut them open to pull their guts out and rinse them in preparation for packaging and cooling.

It seems really disgusting, but you really get used to it!Mama is the fastest and most thorough eviscerater, but she was the one with the camera, so she isn't pictured. That's the whole process from start to finish!

Yesterday, Elliott set a goal of having all of the chickens finished, parted (he sells some in parts-- i.e. leg packs, boneless breast fillets, etc.), and packaged by 5 pm (we began around 10:30 am). He told us that if we finished by 5 pm, he'd buy each of us a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream! Fortunately, we finished around 4:45 pm, so we each enjoyed lots of ice cream last night!

"The first rule of chicken processing is if you feel something wet on your lip, don't lick it." ~ Joel Salatin ;)