Well, I didn't actually kill any chickens, ducks, or turkeys -- that was Alberto's job, a worker at the local processing plant who moonlights as a bird-processor-for-hire. Ever since I read the fairly gruesome section of Tom Philpott's The Omnivore's Dilemma where he helps out "processing", or killing and dressing chickens, I've been curious about the "process". About a few weeks before Thanksgiving there was an email sent out by Jessica Gottlieb of Farmhand describing a two day event helping out Nancy Kelly, the Nicholas School and Institute's Director of Conferences and Special Events. Nancy also keeps a pot-bellied pig sanctuary on her property in addition to several hundred chickens, hens, and ducks and somehow also has time to raise her two young daughters. I had the pleasure of meeting Nancy Kelly during the planning of Nick School professor Erika Weinthal's Environmental Peacebuilding Conference last year, and have been keen to help out whenever there's been a Farmhand activity involving Nancy's farm.

A number of Nick School farmhands showed up on the Saturday before Thanksgiving to catch all of the birds for the next day. I showed up the following morning around 7AM to begin a long day that wouldn't end for me until after dark -- and much later than that for Nancy. I started out at Nancy's by feeding the ducks and giving them fresh water. We also discovered that a clutch of chucks had been born! Chucks are, apparently, chickens that are hatched by ducks who have been convinced to sit around and incubate them. Nancy then graciously fed me a delicious breakfast of eggs from the resident chickens, pork sausage from her neighbors, and some of the thickest coffee I've ever had. Her daughters also helpfully talked me out of my morning stupor. Or was it the coffee. In any case, Nancy would be driving the "reefer" truck, the trade jargon for a refrigerated truck, and I would be taking the old Nissan truck loaded up with the birds to be processed. We would also be processing a neighbor's turkeys, but those were already at the processing site.

So we drove out to Chatham County, with the large reefer truck hogging the small roads and me trying to negotiate the difficult clutch of the Nissan, with the hens and ducks clucking and staring at me in the rear-view.

A certain number of birds can be processed on farms in North Carolina, which is the direction we were heading -- a friend's farm. Processing facilities make farmers' lives easier, since they'll take your birds from start to finish in a bag -- but they are also at least twice the cost of hiring an individual to do the work. When we arrived, Alberto was already well into the turkeys, with only about ten to go. His wife and son were also there, his wife lending a hand and his 3 year old son playing with chicks in the flatbed. I didn't grow up playing with chicks.

With Roberto doing the killing and dressing, Nancy and I concentrated on moving around and organizing the processed birds, weighing them and lining up the correct sizes with customers' orders. In a word about the actual processing, I had imagined more of a circus of an event -- with about 10 people helping out in conveyor belt fashion with blood flying everywhere and birds shrieking as described by Philpott in Omnivore's Dilemma. On the contrary, the mood was lazy and quiet. Alberto took about three birds at a time (or one turkey), hung them upside down, gave a quick shock from a battery-and-prod set-up, and following a quick incision, the blood was drained to a trough below where the birds would hang. If I hadn't been paying attention, I don't think I would have noticed.

As with each time I've volunteered on a farm, my back and I were once again reminded of how hard the work is. But the people gotta have their fresh, local birds!!