Blog for Ocrober 2008  

Log for the month of October 2008

For six months Phil has been driving me crazy with this carbon foot print thing. His 1988 Ford Ranger Truck "Rick" was finally put out to pasture. A sad day indeed, as I am very fond of that truck. We were reduced down to my truck with the Nathaniel rebuilt engine, and the 1969 MGB for transportation. It was time to buy a new car. In August I had put a down payment on a Prius. I wanted a 2008, but none could be found, so I bought a 2009 for the same price "plus a little extra" according to Ira at prime Toyota in Saco. I also didn’t want leather seats, but that was all they could get. It has two really good things going for it. The first- (which I think should be the main advertising focus of hybrid car manufacturers) is that to fill the gas tank, you only spend about thirty seconds in the freezing Maine air. It has a pint sized bladder tank of eight or so gallons (which really does allow us to go four hundred miles before refueling) AND this car has a turning radius of a bicycle. I am not used to a "car" per se and we shall see how it fairs living where we do. Four wheel drive is sometimes a must.

Phil has been wanting to further reduce our toeprint by having an A123 lithium ion battery installed by Hymotion. He insists we will get even better mileage. I agree with the entire plug in hybrid concept. I think it is the ONLY answer for reducing our dependence on foreign oil at this time- but I just cant get my mind around the cost. We would have to pay $10,000 for this battery. In addition, I will lose the spare tire as the new battery goes in the space occupied by the spare. If you work the numbers you will never recoup the cost- even if fuel stays at $4.00  a gallon. I know it is the "right" thing to do, but when we have a household income less than that of the typical Maine family- it seems like an extravagant environmental statement. So, I have continued to resist this step in the "right" direction. It is causing mucho problemos around the farmo.

I would like to wait and see what comes down the pike. Toyota is supposed to make a lithium ion hybrid which will have plug in capability. Trading in “Pierre” for a newer version makes more sense for me- they will probably figure out how to have the battery and a spare tire. We will wait and see.

Farm

I am sad to report that my professional organization the AVMA, is not in favor of California proposition 2- otherwise known as the prevention of farm animal cruelty act. This bill would allow laying hens the opportunity to have enough room to extend their wings- and even turn around. (Gee whiz isn’t that a novel concept!) The act also supports the same rights be granted to veal calves and sows in breeding boxes. As a veterinarian, I was taught to deal with the diseases these animals suffered. Granted, with chickens living in a space the size of a shoebox they do have less lesions from other hens that are bored out of their minds and have nothing better to do than pick at their neighbor; but it also leads to pneumonia and stomach ulcers in the veal calves and sows, not to mention the joint problems the sows get from living most of their lives on unable to stand properly.

These factory farm methods are barbaric and disgusting. If people stopped buying and eating veal, bacon, ham, cheap eggs, cheap chickens and all the products made from them, at the grocery store, then farmers would by necessity change over to more human farming methods. The AVMA can't figure out why no one wants to be a farm animal vet anymore. WAKE UP you idiots! You are giving a BAD name to my wonderful profession. None of us "New vets" wants anything to do with these more efficient, cost saving, nutrient poor, pesticide and antibiotic rich, methods of raising food.

This is how we at Williams Farm obtain chicken for dinner.

(If you are squeamish you might want to skip this section. It goes into detail our methods of killing chickens.)

October was also the time to slaughter our 24 cornish x chickens. We did it in two kills, two weeks apart. Mostly because I wanted two sizes- really big roasters and regular. It is also exhausting work killing, plucking and gutting.

It is funny how there is chicken discrimination on the farm. The girls (our layers) don't like the meat hens- with good reason. The meat hens grow at an absurdly rapid rate, which leads to joint deformities and early degenerative arthritis. By the time they are six weeks- when we do in our first batch- they are already so big they can barely walk, will not perch and just live to eat and shit. They don't partake in the normal chicken behavior of dust baths, sunning, bug hunting and exploration-not because they don't have the opportunity- but because they prefer not to! I don't feel guilty about killing them and I certainly have no trouble eating them. They eat all organic food, live in a chicken palace and are the most delicious birds imaginable. The meat cuts with a fork and is succulent, the skin is yellow, the amount of fat…yummy

To begin the process I start the night before by baking "chicken cake." This is a delicious last meal onto which I pour a half gallon of rot-gut vodka. The cake soaks up the alcohol, the chickens eat the cake and the alcohol makes my job easier. I am the official chicken catcher. A drunk happy chicken is easier to grab than a suspicious hungry hen.

Once caught, I cover their heads with cloth tape, making sure their eyes and ears are covered. I have found when I talk softly to them, the hand off to Phil goes much smoother- they accept their fate calmly and don’t flap their wings or squawk. I tell them they are going to learn how to bungie jump and it is really good fun; they just have to hang upside down a bit. I know it is probably not fair to lie to someone at the end of their life- but if I just say nothing, they freak out when I turn them upside down.

Once handed over, Phil slips their legs into pre-placed lines with nooses,  where they hang by their feet. (Hence the bungie jumping part.) While still wearing their head covers, Phil slits their throat. We let three drain at a time for about twenty minutes and then carry them around to the garage where we have a plywood table set up and a large pot boiling on a Coleman stove. Phil dunks them ten seconds up and down, into the boiling water. Then we pluck them.

He cuts off the head, the feet, and cuts out the uropygial gland (Preen gland a knobby nub above the tail which secretes oil- using their beaks birds comb this through their feathers to aid in water repellency), he then cuts out their vent (the multipurpose hole through which a bird shits, pees and passes eggs) Then he passes them down the assembly line to me, where I reach in the oval hole he has cut and pull all their guts out, being careful not to rupture the gall bladder. I kind of like this part. All birds have no diaphragm so you can reach all the way up to their throat and yank everything out in one fell swoop. Its nice and warm and not gross at all. The best part is when you grab hold of the syrinx and make them squawk- its gruesome fun… 

Do I have trouble with this, as I am one of only a few avian vets in my state? I wish I could say I did, but I don't. At this point the chickens pretty much look like roasters from the grocery store- I bring them into the kitchen, give them a bath in Dawn dish washing soap, remove stray feathers, blood and poop and then wrap them up in freezer paper and package them in ziplock bags. They sleep comfortably in the freezer from this point on until their final trip into the oven.

These chickens have a good life and a peaceful death. I allow no bird to see or hear what is happening to its pal. Is it pain free? As much as I can make it. Although I would feel better about devising some kind of automatic head chopper-guillotine thing. A chainsaw? I have to admit the throat slitting thing, as fast as Phil is and as sharp as our knives are, is still pretty crude, but it is the method all chicken producers use. The chickens are alive for probably six seconds before they die. I believe a complete cervical chopping dislocation would be better. I may switch to killing cones and pull their heads down with a weight and then lop them off with a machete. Phil says he will quit if we go that route. "I've been killing chickens for years and this is the way I am going to do it…" It is the only thing that bothers me with our process.

In the old days before I met Phil, I used to take my chickens and turkeys on a drive to west Gardiner beef for their final trip. I lied to them too. One time I drove two giant bronze wing turkeys inside my Mercedes sedan seated atop sheets, (I hated this car that's why I used it for farm hauling) seat belts fastened around their plump pre-Thanksgiving carcasses for the two-hour drive. Down the highway we drove with the other cars and their passengers pointing, and laughing at the turkeys calmly sitting in a Mercedes enjoying the passing scenery. I told them they were going to hockey camp to learn the finer points of skating, body checking and puck passing techniques. They seemed content with that.

When we arrived at the slaughterhouse, a pickup truck with a cargo bed full of one dozen white turkeys pulled up next to us. My two bronze wings looked over at me questioning why the turkeys were riding in the back of the truck, “Hockey team from Canada,” I told my two bronze wings. It was only when the knacker came out to my car wearing a white blood splattered apron and sporting a toothless grin, that they turned and looked at me with a questioning glance. When he grabbed them by the legs and carried them into the building upside down, I got the cold steely turkey eye- “You lied to us.”

Beyond the Mooring

What do I want to do when I grow up? That seems to be the universal question around these parts. All my life I wanted to be a vet on the coast of Maine, live on a salt-water farm, drive a green 69 MGB to work with a red mini dachshund at my side whose ears stream back in the wind like flying carpets. Ok. So I'm doing it. I love my job. I adore the people I work with. I live in the nicest house ever made, and the MG runs perfectly. Oscar does piss in the house on an almost daily basis- but when we drive in the MG his ears do stream back like flying carpets. Life is pretty good; and my life's goals have been met. So now what?

Sail around the world again? No, while many people do that- I would want to do something very different. We would always be comparing the past to the present. It wouldn’t be the same. Funnily enough, were I to write "World Voyagers" now, it would be a completely different book. It would be exactly like every other cruising book out there. No whining. No reality checks, no gross stuff, pain or boredom. The years have erased all the bad parts and left me only with Hallmark moments…Sailing around the world is a romantic notion and something everyone should do in life.

I needed to know which way I should go with my non-vet self: write, or paint. How best to make money? Veterinary medicine is fun, exciting, but not a lucrative profession. I have no retirement for the twenty years I have put in. Last year,  I sent off an article I wrote about my uncle and my grandfather to shouts and murmurs at the new Yorker. They were interested, but wanted more dirt. Impossible, while certain family members are still living. I sent off an article to Maine Boats Homes and Harbors I had written about my friend John Bisbee. I sent off cds of my paintings to juried art shows. I decided whichever venue came back interested in my work, would be the route I would concentrate on.

I heard back two weeks later. The editor at Maine Boats, Homes, Harbors, Paintbrushes and Flower pots, wanted my article and offered to pay me more than they usually do, "Because it was so darn good!" (see jan/Feb 2009) Huh? Moi? I buggered out of writing term papers in high school and did art projects instead. I am the one in high school that was placed in the extra-spastic-remedial writing group created especially for yours truly, after failing in the regular lazy teenage remedial writing group. I hated those stupid sentence diagrams they made us do. Nouns, verbs, prepositions, all words neatly stacked and layered onto lines like suburban street maps. What was the point? It was only when I started taking creative writing that my work was recognized. I won awards in college and many of my professors kept some of my written exams for posterity in the school archives.

On the artwork front, my paintings were accepted in Art Buzz 2009 an international magazine promoting new artists, and "Urban Jungle" went to New York for a show. So now what? Write? Paint? It's a mess- I'll have to do both.

In the mean time, buy our book eat local, invest in art... and save your money for great buying opportunities in the stock market yet to come...

That’s it from this corner of the Ocean