Do you ever wonder what a day is made of. Other than air and time, light and matter. All so different, every day the same but completely different to each of us. How you and I came to be in it, together like this. I think about what a day consists of as I milk the cow, and make the cheese and split and stack the wood and feed the chickens and collect their eggs. And check the traps and feed and tame the peacocks. And train the dogs and move the sheep. Weed the garden and lie in the growing grass just inhaling. I am filled with the polar changes that are yet the same. Awful and awesome. One is Full of awe and the other only Some awe. Awe-full means something dreadful and deeply grim. Awe-some means something wonderful and worth mentioning in inspired and excited manner. yes they are the same really. Two sides of the same coin. The horror with the joy. Does all this awe float about in the air and the light. Imagine if animals did not need sleep. How would our world be if there was no dark. And why do hamburgers have no ham in them?
I know there are answers to these questions but they are not really questions. You or I can goggle them l and get learned answers, like wee have all been madly googling Bastard Minks. But these are some of the questions that run through my mind as I go about my day. Does a bird tip his head upward so his body follows his wings and he soars Up. If he looks down and forgets the soar does he fall? Why is it that Tima my little pig has learnt to open the kitchen door faster than the dogs Who still have trouble pulling a door open, oh they can push inside, but neither of them have taken the time to wiggle their noses into the gap the screen door leaves and fiddle it until their whole nose can get through then their little fat bodyand open the door to get back out. There are no flies on this little piggy. Do the dogs care?
The chickens have been divided now. Layers and older non layers. The non layers will spend a few weeks fattening up and then they will be prepared for the freezer. I know this sounds harsh to some of you but without the big chook house for them to loiter about in and 70 more chickens and ducklings arriving in early May, I cannot carry them now. I cannot stuff them in with the Layers creating overcrowding. The Bastard Minks have forced my hand.
Owl is going to have to dress more summery soon , but it is still not balmy. So she is waiting.
An interesting community of women has quickly put their hands up around my need to cull the old chickens out of the flock. This is the old way. It almost feels like they have been waiting. I need to hunker down, consolidate, strengthen. Develop a more sustainable plan. This summer was going to be tough enough without the Bastard Mink taking an entire floor out of commission. So this interesting trickle of local vibrant gutsy women have raised their capable hard working hands saying I will do this part or this one. We will set up an assembly line. We will all pitch in and teach miss c how to do it. We have been putting chicken on the family tables for generations.
They will hopefully take a share of the dressed chickens home with them for chicken dumplings or stock. I don’t think that the day we do this will be traumatic, or awful. Not awesome either. Just gentle moving of the birds from field to table. The way it should be. The farming way. Food on the table.
Not for a few weeks though.
So, good morning. I do hope all is well with you. And I really, really do hope you find loveliness today. What will your loveliness be I wonder. Some of mine is watching these two calves gambol across the field. I will stalk them today, with my camera.
Your friend on the farmy
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
83 responses to “Full Awe and Some Awe”
What an interesting post! And the comments equally entertaining! I often ponder the same questions and many more while I’m out there working or photographing in the woods. I think it’s the mystical part of life. Sometimes the questions we can’t answer are the ones that provide the wonderment and awe of life. Sometimes we must just enjoy and let be a mystery.
My parents had a small flock of chickens and my grandparents had more than 200 chickens, some layers and others were broilers. I have fond memories of the “egg man” coming to Grandma’s to collect eggs each week. He always told us kids that his wife used a lot of eggs and each visit he thought of a new menu item that his wife was using these hundreds of eggs for. Of course we didn’t believe him but we loved his jolly manner and his sometimes wild menus! Even as small children we helped with the “chicken line”, most of us plucking feathers. I can’t say I liked it at the time but it was a part of farm life that I now appreciate. It wasn’t until I married FD, who provides most of our wild meats by hunting, that I truly learned to appreciate an animal giving its life for our nutrition. Any time he brings something home, we give thanks to the animal. I do that same thing every time I gather eggs from the chicken barn…. and last week as I buried the chickens that a raccoon ravaged and killed, I thanked them for their many eggs and for the delight of their antics each day. Even for people who purchase meat from stores, it is a good thing to be thankful for the animals that lay down their life for us… every life (plant or animal) provides a gift.
Is it the time of year? that we are having such predator problems with our hens. So sorry a raccoon got yours. That is miserable.. c
Hi …. When I was on my Aunt and Uncles farm and a couple of chickens were being readied for the table I remember getting to have a chicken foot ,finding the slippery tendon and pulling on it and making the foot move ! Perhaps gruesome to some but I was fascinated !! It may have sparked my curiousity enough that many moons later I stated a 25 year career in massage therapy and Continue to be curious and fascinated by tendons !!!!!!
Have an awe some, curious day !,,
Nanster
hmm.. well .. actually I am gobsmacked..I guess they are all learning experiences.. c
You didn’t come to this decision easily, Celi, but it must be done for the good of the flock and farmy. How nice that your community will come to help you. Yes, you’re going to need a big pot of boiling water for the plucking. I helped clean the chickens Grandpa bought weekly. He and Nonna would slaughter them and dip them in the water and I plucked and cleaned them. The women would watch me closely to make sure none of the “internal” egg yolks were damaged during the process. They gathered them all and used them to make the pasta for Sunday’s supper. If you want to see brightly colored pasta, use those egg yolks. You won’t find any fresher. 🙂
Wow, I never even knew about those internal eggs.. goodness.. c
Yes, depending upon the chicken’s age, they can have plenty of egg yolks, in varying sizes according to maturity.
Huh.. I feel i must have known that but never really thought about it.. thank you.. I learned something.. good..c
I trained Molly to open our old back door by putting a chunk of her favourite cooked fish on the other side of the door, which was ajar of course. I showed her once; poked my fingers between the gap and opened it slightly so she could smell the fish. She caught on instantly, and has been opening ajar doors around the house ever since. Obviously she can’t reach a door handle, so the door can’t be closed and latched. I mean, she is a dog, afterall … who thinks a gremlin lives in the fridge. (sigh)
Good thinking, thank you misky, Ton is always pushing in through the screen door then is marooned inside until I come back in.. I will teach him today.. c
Cinders, you are the awe-some one here! What a beautiful, funny and inspiring post! Thank-you!
Thank you for the darling threesome in the field. I like seeing their relative size.
I cannot get enough of watching the three young ones, they are so new and clean and lively! c
I’ve had one of those tend-sick-children days when you don’t know what is wrong or what to do about it. So frustrating. So tiring. So it is a good thing to be reminded of the awesome and the awe full. I have not been looking up at the sky today, but don’t at the feverish forehead and the achy stomach. I need to lighten for a minute or two. Thank you, Celi.
Your blog is amazing to read and your photos are works of art – actually your way of life is a work of love and art. Your blog is the one the first I read each day. We had a few banties at a time- just for eggs- never had the heart to eat them. But I do understand the pragmatism you must have.
When I was a kid we went to the butcher/meat market for our meat. No supermarkets back then. (Wow…am I old or what). Anyway, the only way chickens were sold there was whole with the feet on them. My mother would skin the feet and utilize them in her chicken soup or stock. In those days, the butcher would, well, butcher and sell the meat in his store. When we butcher old chickens, we keep them refrigerated until rigor mortis passes – about 24 hours before we freeze them whole or cut them up. Otherwise they are soooooo tough. We also use a killing cone to keep them quiet and they never know what hit them.
very good tip about the cooling before freezing, makes perfect sense.. c
Thank you for such a lovely post upon awakening.
My local farmer processed all her boilers last week, and I was lucky enough to get a couple for the freezer. Seems a lot of us on here had grandparents with chickens, I did to!
By the way, I believe it is called hamburgers because they first came from Hamburg in Germany, not because of the content of which animal meat was used. Same with the so called ‘hot dog’ which we know as a frankfurter, which originated in where else but Frankfurt Germany!
Hugs, Lyn
Beautiful post as ever Celi… my first port of call each day, thank you
When I was a young bride there was a group of us who formed a co-operative to buy our food in bulk, one of the things we did was travel an hour or so to a farm and buy live weight chickens at a really cheap price, but we had to kill, clean and pluck. I had some experience from doing it as a child….come home from school to find a note saying get a chicken ready to cook…..I know, horrible to think of it now, that little 8/9 yr old killing and prepping what I thought of as my pets, but I digress………. so we women had the line going, all doing the task we could manage, while our children played around us with chicken heads and feet and had feather fights. I remember those days as some of the best. I don’t eat meat now, haven’t for over 30 years, but if I was going to (and I know I won’t) I want it to live and die like yours, and I wholeheartedly support your ethos. Speaking of chickens, my Betty who laid blue eggs, died yesterday, she was only 2 and I have no idea why, she was fine at lunchtime, my puppy found her dead under a bush a couple of hours later, I heard her whining and went to look, she was laying flat with just her nose touching Betty and whimpering, that made me cry harder than finding Betty with her toes turned up. No predators around here, so I have no idea why, just one of those things I guess. Sorry, looks like I just took over your blog, better go write on my own blog 🙂
that is miserable, especially when you don’t know why she died.. poor pup. Dogs are curious creatures. And thank you for reading and supporting me even when you do not eat meat yourself. Frankly if I lived to please myself I would not eat much meat either, but I could not live out here and be self sufficient as a vegetarian. The winters are too long and the growing season too short. I would have to go somewhere where I could grow vegetables and so forth all year round. I hope you are feeling better after losing your chook. It is odd. Two is not old. c
thanks, still feeling sad, but you know how that feels. Betty was such a cheeky little thing, always the one who could always find a way into the veggie patch. She would steal Mirrhi’s bone out from under her nose and Mirrhi would wait with that plaintive look until she could steal it back, so I guess they had a bond. You could come live here….far northern NSW, sub tropical, volcanic soil, all year growing……close to the beach, lots of farms nearby who raise and kill their meat humanely if you do fancy a chop…..it’s all here.
sounds perfect actually, how on earth did I end up settling in such an inhospitable place, still it is nice at the moment.. c
Love? Joy
you will learn about yet another part of the cycle of life when harvesting your older chickens, and it will be wonderful and hard, just as farming is. We’ll be harvesting our older ducks this summer, and it is always a mixed blessing to say thank you for living a good life with us and giving us so much, but now it is time for the confit pot. I wish all birds and animals involved in agriculture could be given such a respectful end at the completion of their productive days.
Yes, farming allows us a curious balance don’t you think. I like this balance.. c
What an interesting post for a city gal who has never killed a chicken in her life! So much help from the Fellowship, so many ideas!! Love the three youngsters gambolling in the ever greening field! But have to laugh about the supposed ‘necessity’ of toilet paper. Well half the world or more does not use it, and having been thru’ a long and hard war, I can assure you that one was hugely happy to find a few sheets of newspaper on occasion for the purpose 😀 !!