Taylorsville Dayzz

This weekend Kennedy, Ash, Derek, Ry and Briggs went down to JaNeale and Jimmys for Taylorsville Dayzz. Kennedy goes every year and loves it. They had an absolute blast with carnival rides, parades, hot tubing and ice cream! Kennedy looks forward to it every year.

Grandpa Jimmy and Miss K

 All of the kids got new 4th of July outfits

 Saturday night Kennedy and Grandma had a special sleepover in their camper in the driveway

She had so much fun! Cant wait again til next year!

Bongos, Swimming, Ryanes visit, broken week and new boots

I took a nap when I got home from work one day and when I woke up Kennedy had made 4th of July bongos. She cleaned up her entire mess and didnt even get glue on the table. I was so excited!

Shes in her second phase of swim lessons and has a new instructor. Our FAVORITE one Miss Syndie. We love her and Kennedy has done so well having her again! Shes made a lot of progress this last week.

 Our cousin Ryane is visiting from Hawaii. This was the first time Kennedy can remember meeting her. She spent a few days with Liz and Kinlie for fun and came to our house. She was excited we had nice chickens.

 Koree found her favorite spot on 'her' swing

 and these 3 girls laughed like crazy on the trampoline

 Kinlie, Ryane and Kennedy

Kennedy was having a rough night and needed some dad loves. They spent a good 5 minutes like this and it made me smile.

We had a rough week at the Richards house hold. I started making dinner one night and noticed the kitchen smelled funny. I thought maybe it was the fridge and searched it with nothing smelling. There were no dishes in the sink. I couldnt figure it out. I started making dinner and grabbed a dishwasher packet to throw in. The box was soaked. Shit. I pulled out everything under the sink and it was sopping wet. I wiped it down and turned on the dishwasher. It started spilling water all over. The dishwasher hose had a ton of holes in it. I went to 2 different stores that night looking for a new hose. They didnt have one so Home depot was next. They didnt have it either. Chris was at class and I had to call him to see what he wanted. He had me just buy some tubing. 

Well during this dishwasher mess Id ran out to get some veggies from the freezer. The door has to be shut and then pushed to make sure its tight. I didnt shut it tight enough and it stayed partially open during the night.. like open 1 inch. The next morning K goes out to get pancakes and she tells me the meat in the door is dripping. Son of a! We go out there and the freezer is melting. We only lost a few pieces of meat in the door and were able to send the rest to my moms freezer. We unplugged it and let it thaw and sit for a day hoping it would come back to life. It did for one day and then died completely. We had to go buy a new freezer. 

The same night that the dishwasher broke when Chris was at class I turned on the sprinklers out front and the one started leaking. Chris fixed it that next morning and it worked fine. He was gone at class that night after and I turned on the sprinklers (the same day the freezer died) and it started running water again and not working. I sent him a picture to prove its bubbling out of the ground. He turns the sprinkler on the next morning and it runs just fine! No water running down the driveway. I was done. He told me I wasnt allowed to touch anything else. So what do I do I go to start the dishwasher and cant get the door to shut. He ended up having to pull the dishwasher out, reattach it and then the door would shut. I cant win for anything.  

But in other news the garden is growing great!

 Two big things happened in our house hold this week also...

This.

He was so excited he told me it was Christmas in July and threatened to sleep with his helmet in the bed

 and this!!!

 Dusty was selling some nice never worn wild land boots that are normally about $400 for $100 and they fit me perfectly! I decided there is no better way to break them in than shooting at night. Nothing is worse than spending all day hiking in stiff wild land boots! Hopefully this way it will cut down on some blisters. Its a good thing my hubby loves me cause he just laughed when I walked outside like this. Its 100 degrees what do you expect!

Chicken Pluckin

Saturday morning we commenced our first chicken plucking adventure. Todd, Jana, Chris, K and I went to the Search and Rescue fundraiser breakfast and then started our plucking set up. We put up canopies in the backyard an assembled our stations. We had to do some fine tuning on our Mother Plucker but she finally was ready for the test!

This is what the outside looks like. 

 and the inside. Full of rubber plucking fingers

 This was the killing table. Cant get more high tech than that.. old road cones, a 4 wheeler ramp and two blue barrels held down by sandbags.

This was Todds station. He was the only one of us who had done this before. His job was the killer aka bleeder.

 My job was catcher. I had to catch every single damn chicken by hand and carry them up to the killing table. Kennedy helped me. Yeah I know Im looking hot in muck boots, shorts and an apron. It was hot and messy! 

 The chicken is put upside down in the cone with its head poking through and a bucket under neath to catch the blood. You slice their throats from the inside and let them bleed out into the buckets.

We had to take a picture with our first completely processed chicken. 

 From there it was game on! We had to do a little tweaking a few times with the plucker but we got it running good. Our backyard was a party! Hunter stopped by for a few minutes. Liz and Kyle found out what we were doing and came out to help. Taylor made the mistake of stopping by on his dirt bike and we put him straight to work. Justin and Kyle were driving past and stopped to say hi. They were surprised at our operation. Then one of Dads fire fighters Don saw it on FaceBook and came just to see how our plucker worked.  

 Koree supervised. We put her in the car seat so she couldnt get near the fires. She was well fed with cheetos, oreos and capri suns 

 Liz took step by step pictures to show the process. First the bird is taken to the table where its killed. Once its dead its taken from the cones of death...

 Over to the hot tub. The water is about 170 degrees and its dipped for just about 10 seconds

Its pulled from there and carried to the plucker

 Where the bottom white part spins fast. You spray it with water and it knocks all the feathers off.

 The feathers and water drain out a hole in the side. This is how naked the chicken comes out after about 20 seconds of plucking.

 Then its taken to the table for any additional detailing thats needed.

From the table it goes to the gutters. Heads and feet are cut off, insides removed.

Then it gets washed out very well.

and dropped into these nifty sealer bags dad found. 

They get wrapped up

Put into the second pot and dropped into the first of hot water.

After just a few seconds it seals all around the chicken and is pulled out of the water.

 Its placed on a cooler of ice so it can cool down before being put into the freezer.

 We had 46 birds done and stuffed into the freezer before we knew it! Some of the fatties were huge!!

I know a lot of people are thinking eww gross! I cant believe theyd do that. We have raised these chickens from 1 week old. We know exactly what theyve eaten, how theyve been raised, how they were killed and how the meat was handled. You cant get more organic than that!!