Farewell Chickens, Farewell Summer

On August nineteenth, Dad and I went to the Aurthur poultry locker with the chickens I raised this summer. It was kind of funny because Dad had planned it on the day that Mom had planned to startd school, so I got a field trip while the others were doing school. Another reason why it was cool is because we got the chickens on the same week that summer vacation started and butchered them on the same day the rest of the kids stared school. We woke up about 4:00 am and loaded them. We put some feed on the ground in a corner of their coop. As they were eating, we grabbed them and put them in the cages that we had borrowed. We filled a total of three cages. Before we left, Jared had to quickly kiss at least one chicken good-bye! It was kind of sad to think of not having them out there anymore. We got to Arthur about 6:45 and unloaded the chickens. We sat in line for about a half hour and then we backed up to a shop door and then we picked up the cages and put them on a pallet. A man pushing a forklift appeared and took them away. While that was going on, we saw someone arrive with a bunch of turkeys and we could see them getting their heads chopped off. It was lucky that we had arrived when we did (15 minutes before it opened) because by the time we left, there was a line all the way out to the road. After we dropped off the chickens,  we went to eat (notice my meal of biscuits and gravy :-). Then we went to a ton of different stores and drove around until the chickens were done.  Thank goodness we had a new freezer  waiting at home for these chickens. We are looking forward to eating them soon! It was a great first day of school.

- Marcus