Butchering rabbit
I'm eating rabbit stew tonight, which is a day I knew would come. In fact, I knew exactly when it would come: We're slaughtering our rabbits as part of our November work party. I still had a month to prepare for it.
We woke up Saturday to find one of our rabbits laying in our barnyard, clearly in shock. He had gotten out of his cage and become a chew toy for Thistle, our livestock guardian dog.
The rabbit didn't have any open wounds, but did have at least two broken bones. One front leg and one hind leg were out at a funny angle, such that it broke your heart when he tried to move.
The situation put me in a deep state of shock, over everything. Over loosing one more heartbeat from an accident, over what we could possibly do with this dog. It become the issue that represented anything that was going wrong.
I normally feel like I've got a handle on what I need to do, when I see a situation. This one paralyzed me. I sat dumb and numb for some time just trying to figure out what was happening.
The rabbit didn't survive the night, but by that time I knew exactly what needed to be done, I'm afraid at the expense of stressing my poor housemates. Without much conferencing, and in the middle of breakfast, I sharpened the two best knives I had and walked out to begin the process of dressing the rabbit.
We hadn't done any planning for the space we were going to do this in, so I improvised a table out of an upturned pressure cooker and a log. When I started, I only really had a notion that I would be beheading the animal and hanging him up to bleed, but going through the process I realized I really needed to at least remove all the organs as well.
Cutting into an animal feels like you're putting way to much pressure into the knife, until finally you make a cut; after which it is way too easy. Even though the rabbit was very dead, it still took a lot of mental effort to remove the head. You still expect them to put up some kind of fight.
I've done a fair bit of hunting, but the only dressing I remember doing is cleaning fish. I distinctly remember not wanting to put my hand inside them, at the time! The deer we caught always seemed to magically turn themselves inside out. I don't ever recall being part of that process.
So I wasn't really prepared to remove the skin. You make what feels like a deep cut, easily enough to puncture an organ, and it isn't enough to get through the muscle. I made the mistake of eviscerating the rabbit before removing all of the skin. Part of that was not having a clean surface to work on, and some of it was my confusion over just how much subcutaneous fat a rabbit has. I didn't want to peel away any of the meat.
All the same, I did a fair job of removing the digestive system, which is the part you don't want to accidentally open. I separated out the kidneys, liver, and heart, though I confused the liver and heart with each other.
Having done what I could alone, I brought the beheaded and gutted rabbit back to the house. I'm certain I was quite stressed, and I could certainly see it in my housemates. They stopped eating to come help me finish, which first consisted of making counter space and providing a decent work area.
desertwind fetched her meat cleaver and took over the process of removing the skin. She has done plenty of butchering, but the animal usually came to her already skinned. We managed to work our way through it well enough. It really only takes one rabbit to get what a book is trying to tell you. And it certainly would have been easier to do before evisceration.
The rest of the process involved me holding the hind legs while desertwind worked, until I eventually traded off with yarrowkat and bowed out of the process.
I hadn't finished eating, so I grabbed my plate and ate for the rest of the process. This was generally commented upon, but I'm afraid my appetite stops for nothing. I get *tired* of eating all the time. But there isn't anything that causes me to *loose* my appetite. I have to eat way too much for that to be a reasonable possibility.
We finished skinning the rabbit and put it in a stew pot for dinner. We decided to keep the skull, which is now cooking outside in a crock pot.
Ironwood farms recently butchered a batch of broiler chickens, and I had some of that a couple of months ago. I already knew I am a machine for converting carbs into energy--that a high carb diet is scientifically suited to my lifestyle. Nothing about eating meat changes the basic energy equation--I have to be careful to moderate my consumption.
Which really is just as well. I've been told countless stories about that "first hamburger" after someone decided to no longer be a vegetarian. I don't have one of my own, it tastes like it always has, and I can take it or leave it.
It was more interesting to me how this meat differed from what you could get from a commercial butcher. We stewed the whole carcass, so it was full of bones that needed to be picked out. And I managed to miss a small section of the large intestine (with attached feces!) when dressing the rabbit. This thankfully wound up in my bowl instead of a bowl of one of our work party volunteers.
Today I took the rest of the entrails and moved them to the far back of the property as an offering to coyote. Doing a small ritual really brought to me the need for this kind of thing to be a ritualistic act. I hadn't done much processing until that point.
Everything happened so fast I haven't yet formally given my thanks, though I know now in what way I wish to do so. I've also got a new goal for Thanksgiving: adapting this ADF meal rite into a four element system that Sunflower River (there being four of us) can use for our house meals. Or at least Thanksgiving.
We woke up Saturday to find one of our rabbits laying in our barnyard, clearly in shock. He had gotten out of his cage and become a chew toy for Thistle, our livestock guardian dog.
The rabbit didn't have any open wounds, but did have at least two broken bones. One front leg and one hind leg were out at a funny angle, such that it broke your heart when he tried to move.
The situation put me in a deep state of shock, over everything. Over loosing one more heartbeat from an accident, over what we could possibly do with this dog. It become the issue that represented anything that was going wrong.
I normally feel like I've got a handle on what I need to do, when I see a situation. This one paralyzed me. I sat dumb and numb for some time just trying to figure out what was happening.
The rabbit didn't survive the night, but by that time I knew exactly what needed to be done, I'm afraid at the expense of stressing my poor housemates. Without much conferencing, and in the middle of breakfast, I sharpened the two best knives I had and walked out to begin the process of dressing the rabbit.
We hadn't done any planning for the space we were going to do this in, so I improvised a table out of an upturned pressure cooker and a log. When I started, I only really had a notion that I would be beheading the animal and hanging him up to bleed, but going through the process I realized I really needed to at least remove all the organs as well.
Cutting into an animal feels like you're putting way to much pressure into the knife, until finally you make a cut; after which it is way too easy. Even though the rabbit was very dead, it still took a lot of mental effort to remove the head. You still expect them to put up some kind of fight.
I've done a fair bit of hunting, but the only dressing I remember doing is cleaning fish. I distinctly remember not wanting to put my hand inside them, at the time! The deer we caught always seemed to magically turn themselves inside out. I don't ever recall being part of that process.
So I wasn't really prepared to remove the skin. You make what feels like a deep cut, easily enough to puncture an organ, and it isn't enough to get through the muscle. I made the mistake of eviscerating the rabbit before removing all of the skin. Part of that was not having a clean surface to work on, and some of it was my confusion over just how much subcutaneous fat a rabbit has. I didn't want to peel away any of the meat.
All the same, I did a fair job of removing the digestive system, which is the part you don't want to accidentally open. I separated out the kidneys, liver, and heart, though I confused the liver and heart with each other.
Having done what I could alone, I brought the beheaded and gutted rabbit back to the house. I'm certain I was quite stressed, and I could certainly see it in my housemates. They stopped eating to come help me finish, which first consisted of making counter space and providing a decent work area.
desertwind fetched her meat cleaver and took over the process of removing the skin. She has done plenty of butchering, but the animal usually came to her already skinned. We managed to work our way through it well enough. It really only takes one rabbit to get what a book is trying to tell you. And it certainly would have been easier to do before evisceration.
The rest of the process involved me holding the hind legs while desertwind worked, until I eventually traded off with yarrowkat and bowed out of the process.
I hadn't finished eating, so I grabbed my plate and ate for the rest of the process. This was generally commented upon, but I'm afraid my appetite stops for nothing. I get *tired* of eating all the time. But there isn't anything that causes me to *loose* my appetite. I have to eat way too much for that to be a reasonable possibility.
We finished skinning the rabbit and put it in a stew pot for dinner. We decided to keep the skull, which is now cooking outside in a crock pot.
Ironwood farms recently butchered a batch of broiler chickens, and I had some of that a couple of months ago. I already knew I am a machine for converting carbs into energy--that a high carb diet is scientifically suited to my lifestyle. Nothing about eating meat changes the basic energy equation--I have to be careful to moderate my consumption.
Which really is just as well. I've been told countless stories about that "first hamburger" after someone decided to no longer be a vegetarian. I don't have one of my own, it tastes like it always has, and I can take it or leave it.
It was more interesting to me how this meat differed from what you could get from a commercial butcher. We stewed the whole carcass, so it was full of bones that needed to be picked out. And I managed to miss a small section of the large intestine (with attached feces!) when dressing the rabbit. This thankfully wound up in my bowl instead of a bowl of one of our work party volunteers.
Today I took the rest of the entrails and moved them to the far back of the property as an offering to coyote. Doing a small ritual really brought to me the need for this kind of thing to be a ritualistic act. I hadn't done much processing until that point.
Everything happened so fast I haven't yet formally given my thanks, though I know now in what way I wish to do so. I've also got a new goal for Thanksgiving: adapting this ADF meal rite into a four element system that Sunflower River (there being four of us) can use for our house meals. Or at least Thanksgiving.