J'accuse ! ! !

Giselle casts an accusing eye in my direction after the untimely death of her friend, Gertrude.

The ducks hasten to the safety of their shelter as I approach.

Sauve qui peut! (every chicken for herself!) the Wyandottes shriek as I saunter up.

An impromptu memorial for the dearly departed Gertrude.

Our poultry plan has run into something of a headwind. Originally we intended to eat 10 of the 20 birds we recently acquired and keep the rest as our laying flock. Things started well. The 10 Wyandottes were scraggly and a bit wild. Just the thing for roast chicken. The 10 Rhode Island Reds on the other hand were handsome, tame and two of them have just started laying. Wonderful how the stars align sometimes! So yesterday we decided to put the plan into action and butcher our first "roaster". The deal was that I would kill the bird and Catherine would pluck and clean it. (As deals go, I think I did O.K. on this one.) We identified a particularly unsympathetic chicken; I caught and killed it and proudly presented the headless fowl to Catherine. (No heads was another part of the deal on her part.) Then the trouble began. Catherine it turns out couldn't see her way clear to pluck and clean a chicken that "she knows". I'm not sure what she means by "knows" but I suppose that after 3 weeks our chickens are at least passing acquaintances and that apparently qualifies. Catherine also claims that she didn't know that "cleaning" a chicken meant removing the innards. So after beheading this unfortunate chicken I found myself finishing the plucking and doing all of the cleaning. The whole operation took just under a couple of hours. The bird itself was scragglier than we had suspected when we originally identified it. It may weigh 8 ounces, but I think that's optimistic. The moral of this story is that we now have a new plan which works wonderfully for everyone. All of our chickens now are "layers" as opposed to "roasters". As a result none of them are looking at imminent death. Catherine is relieved that she won't have to pluck and clean any of her new-found friends. And I'm happy I won't lose another two hours of my life butchering an animal that barely has enough meat on it to make a good fajita. We'll still eat chicken of course. All we'll have to "pluck" however will be the plastic it comes wrapped in.