A day of firsts

It took us a while to get our act together to butcher our first chicken.  There were a whole plethora of reasons why it took us so long.  We kept waffling between wanting to make sure we could actually pull off raising our own meat birds from a cute little chick to in the freezer all by ourselves rather than simply dropping them off at a processing place and picking them up like we would at the grocery store. To do it ourselves we needed to get the proper skill set down and the equipment in place and well we've just have had a lot on our plates. 

Both of our mom's passed away this year, we sold our house of 40 years - 700 miles from where we are living now which meant we were gone for weeks at a time dealing with our moms and finishing up the final move after closing. And the never-ending project list we have working on with this abandoned build we now call home.  And it took time getting our orchard and raised garden beds established...and well just plain life kept getting in the way.  You get it...you're busy with life too.

But, today we did it.  We finally did it and it feels so good.  It may be a tiny accomplishment but we have one huge meat bird in the freezer. Two more to go, but also discovered today we only had room for one in the freezer! So the others live to see another day and for now, that's okay. We are learning and making progress.

Our other first?  Our first egg!  For those of you who keep hens...you know how exciting that moment is!  Well, it made me happy anyway, kind of like a kid in a candy store type of happy.  I know that sounds lame but hey, life is full of these little moments that just make you feel kind of giddy inside. And that's a good thing!

So, today we had a day of firsts.  Might even call it a game changer kind of day.  Ya know, we can do this...we can raise our own meat birds!  We figured it out and got it done all by ourselves...and that feels good. Really good.