Okay, here we go...

Yesterday was a very busy day. 17 birds to be plucked, cleaned, butchered, and packaged. Whew! But we did it! It took 12 hours but by golly it happened! Sadly, I missed out on the actual killing part, lucky for you though you don't have to see the pictures! They try and keep it very calm and so only two people are around to kill. But I was there for everything else. Tobey fashioned me a 'dress' out of a garbage bag, it was her first one of the season and it had four arm holes, but it did the job!

Guiliano and Fabio brought us the birds...

And we got to work plucking...

And plucking...

Just for a second try and imagine what I smelled all day...warm, wet, poultry poop. Nice, eh?

It took us quite a few hours just to pluck, the geese were the hardest and very frustrating. But there was some comic relief through the day, like when Tobey, who was gutting, got squirted in the face by the gallbladder, you should have seen the green liquid all over her face! I laughed so hard I almost peed myself...and then got her some paper towel. The geese really reminded us of the swan dress Bjork wore to some red carpet event:
So, we decided we'd give it a try:
The resemblance is astonishing, isn't it? Minus the blood of course.

Some of the ducks had eggs growing in them, which was sad becuase that means there won't be any ducklings, but Susan says that these embryonic eggs are a delicacy:

Aren't they strange? They kinda look like some weird tropical fruit! That's how eggs grow!!Susan used them to make pasta dough and you should have seen the pasta...it was this gorgeous rich, yellow color. While I wasn't too keen on eating the embyronic eggs as is I definately would've eaten the pasta!

It was a long but fun day! I learned alot and it's going to be fun eating some of the birds that we killed. It is so amazing to me, it's such and old fashioned thing to do...I love it!