With the news of hurricane Irene racing up the coast and headed for New England, Paul and I did some storm preparation today. By the time hurricanes get to Downeast Maine they’ve typically lost a lot of strength with the cold waters up here. Still, we can expect some wind and rain. Just last weekend a storm took down one of our trees and left it across the road.
Our meat chickens were a bit traumatized by that storm. They’re almost eight weeks old and just hitting butchering weight. Uncertain how the chickens would weather another storm so soon we decided to go ahead and start butchering today. Well, Paul butchered and I plucked. Twelve of our 23 meat chickens have taken up residence in the fridge – 57 pounds of chicken. That’s a lot of plucking!
While we were out back butchering roasters, Hannah decided to take care of the hens. She was concerned that they might become bored since they would not be let out of the coop during the thick of the storm tomorrow. To make up for their lack of play time she made “clover bundles laced with blackberries” for The Girls and strung them about the coop.
What I’m not sure she processed is that the Chickens wouldn’t wait until tomorrow to eat them!
Each nesting box got a clover bundle.
