Weekly Mileage

the turkey was trying to impress me

Last week was another busy one. I have the feeling things won't calm down until after Christmas, though even then, it may not. I'm hopeful though. I don't like having this many different things going on.

Wednesday we drove to Gettysburg NMP in Pennsylvania (I'll post more later). We explored Wednesday and Thursday, then drove home Friday morning, arriving home just in time to get Sunshine to her co-op classes. Then we put on our costumes, gathered our stuff, and went to the Chili Cook-off and Trunk or Treat at church. After we returned home from that, Mr M still had to gather his stuff and go to drill for the weekend.

We hadn't planned on things being that crazy busy, but I got my wires crossed on the Montpelier trip we did the week before. I thought it was supposed to be a week later than it was, so we'd planned the Gettysburg trip for the week we ended up doing the Montpelier trip. If it had been that week things would have been slightly less crazy, or maybe just as crazy, but in a different way.

Saturday I helped our neighbor cull her turkey (shown at the top of the post), one of her geese, and her rooster. She free ranges her birds, but the turkey was being aggressive with her kids and ours, so even though she'd hoped to wait until closer to Thanksgiving, it was time. The goose was a different breed from the matched pair she kept, and while she'd planned on keeping it, it just wasn't growing as it should have. She thinks it was hatched from a first year goose, rather than a more mature goose, which affected its size. And the rooster was crowing more than she was comfortable with. We're not zoned for roosters, so if someone complained she could lose her birds. So, better safe than sorry, though it was sad to kill such a good looking bird.

We plucked the goose by hand so she could save the down, but scalded the rooster and turkey. The plucker made short work of the rooster, but couldn't quite handle the turkey. It mostly fit in the plucker (the legs stuck out), but it's weight drastically slowed the movement of the barrel. I hadn't realized that would be an issue, so that was a good learning moment. It did remove a lot of the feathers, so there weren't too many that we had to remove by hand.

We raised turkeys a time or two when I was in elementary school, but that was a really long time ago,  and all I really remember is my older brother hanging on to a turkey for dear life as it flapped around the yard after Dad cut its head off. That and plucking a turkey by hand, which took forever. So killing and gutting this turkey was a new experience for both of us, as was butchering the goose.

We did a couple ducks last time we culled birds, so now we've done lots of chickens, a couple ducks, a goose, and a turkey. It's interesting to see the different shapes of their bodies and to compare which birds are easier to get your hand into for gutting (that would be the turkey). The rooster was super fast to pluck and the skin seemed to hold up better in the plucker than the Cornish Cross we raised last year and this year did. When we have the space to free range our chickens on pasture (we don't here) we might give this breed (Ameraucana) a try.

So, it was another busy week and the only mileage I logged was when we explored the Soldier's National Cemetery in Gettysburg. Hopefully this week is a little calmer and I'm able to squeeze in more miles.

Weekly Mileage
Thursday- 2.00 miles
       total mileage- 2.0 miles

hike #43 towards #52hikechallenge
462.59 miles towards #365milechallenge