Wild Turkey and cooking an old rooster

shYou'll never believe what I did the other day. Don't bother trying to guessing.  Peeled chicken feet. Cricket....cricket...I can hear you stunded silence from here.
It's wild turkey season now and The Man had been after one turkey that kept crossing our land. Several times he ran into the house saying, "Boil some water baby!" He even took off down our road chasing it, but it kept getting away. We were really hoping to get one; you can't get much more free range than wild.

So yesterday afternoon The Man was working at a neighbor's house and here comes the turkey up the driveway. So I get on the phone and call him, but no answer. I decided to keep on trying, and as I'm about to redial I see him coming up the road, and up the drive way right towards The Turkey. I'm montioning to him to stop, and finally he gets the message and I give a quick bird flapping motion and I turn to run into the house for his gun. He hops out of the truck and I meet him in the field and load while and puts in his ear plugs and off he takes, to bring home the bacon...so to speak. And of course he got him.
Since we were going to all the trouble of butchering one we figured we would go ahead and butcher our rooster too, which has long been on our to-do list. We just finished building our new chicken coop (or chicken pook as the girls call it) and we have decided to start free with a new batch of hens instead of integrating birds. So while the water boils we quickly watched a video on butchering chickens.
Now you're going to think this is crazy, and maybe your right. But it just felt good to be doing this work and learning these skills, and to know that these birds had good lives, while they lived, and that God was providing for us. And it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It's so interesting to watch how the girls took all this in. You might think they would be tramatized by it, but they weren't in the least. When I was a little older than the girls someone gave me chicks for easter. Mama told me from the very beginning that they weren't pets and we were going to eat them. I hated those birds. I was always sure they were trying to bit a hunk out of my sweet little baby flesh thighs. When it came time to butcher my mom was crying and I was patting her on the back and telling her, "It's alright Mom. They aren't pets."

The Man told them that God gave us the birds to eat, and they seemed to think that was just fine. The Concoring Hero held up his conquest, The Turkey, for us to see and one of the girls joyfully pointed and proclaimed, "MEAT!" They were much more worried about me asking them to hold the frog we found in the grass today, lol.

So the chicken went right into the crockpot with some onion skins and bay leaf and carrots peels, and we roasted the turkey for dinner. I've gotten over two gallons of chicken stock so far. I would use a ladle and dip off the broth and add more water whenever it looked golden and lovely. Its some of the nicest looking broth I've ever seen. I was amazed at how dark the leg meat was, as dark as beef. What a blessing all that broth has been for easy spring time meals. And  where, and how, and Why In The World chicken feet? You can read about that here.
Blessings to you all! c