Processing Chickens + Canning Pickles | Teaching Self-Sufficiency Skills

I'm going to take you along with us today we're processing our Broiler hens we do between 150 and 160 chickens a year this is meat that feeds our family last year it lasted we were about a month shy so this year we're hoping that we can do enough that we'll feed our family for the year last year we did three batches of 50 this year we're going to do two batches of 75 they always give you more than you need so um I think we got 80 and we have we're going to be doing 80 chickens today I'm not going to show you everything um for obvious reasons but I just want to give you a little picture of what we're doing our kids are involved in ways that are appropriate for them to help getting ice um packaging the chickens you'll see some of the stuff that they [Music] do hi come today is a big day it's our chicken processing day we do this twice a year and it's a lot of work it's a lot of mess um I first thing I wake up I get Benjamin get my coffee I get the kids breakfast going and the first thing on my agenda is to get all the island counters clear because when the process moves inside that's when we're going to need as much counter space as possible you want to send over no if you're new here my name is Sherry I'm a homeschooling mom to 10 kids I'm married to my high school sweetheart Nelson we've been married for 24 years I created this channel to encourage other homeschool moms in the great work that you're doing in your homes I also blog over atarli homeschooling tocom where you can find a ton of resources book lists life skills posts all kinds of encouragement for you there now on the day we process chickens my husband takes off of work this is a big deal we have help um it takes most of the day to do it and at this time in the morning my husband is already up he's already out there and started yes one one pound of proone already have and then a half then a half pound of yeah James and I calling come here help me get these cucumbers okay what cucumbers okay take them to the other table since we have people here helping us there's going to be quite a few people here here for lunch so I had my 16-year-old go out and get some lunch meat something that's easy to throw together for lunch this is our chicken tractor this is something that we move every day so if you look around here you can see the grass around that we move every day to put them on Fresh grass now these chickens are 8 weeks old so they're ready to go they're the perfect size one thing that our kids kid help with is catching the chickens and putting them in crates and we put them in the wagon in the back of our Mower and drive them up to where we'll be processing them we rais Cornish cross roer hens and these take 8 weeks so um for the first two weeks they're in the Brer I'll leave a link to show you the video where we got our chicks they come in the post office and you pick them up then after 2 weeks we put them on fresh grass and they get moved every day for 6 weeks this is the plucker that we use we would not be able to do this process if we didn't have a plucker this is a huge timesaver it is just a great tool to have if you're going to do this uh I spray water in here like this and then I put the chicken in and this the bottom spins and it has these rubber fingers or grommets that um pull the feathers off as the as it spins them around around in the tub so it's electrified turn the switch on the bottom spins and the birds can you turn the switch on real [Music] quick my husband does a great job of explaining to the kids the process some of our older kids do see it we try to Shield our younger kids from it for obvious reasons on the right there you can see those are the killing cones for the chickens um and then after that they get taken to the table where where they're gutted and we put them into a trash can full of ice we had never raised any meat birds for our own until 4 years ago when we moved to this house so this is something that's fairly new to us we had someone come and butcher the chickens for us one year but then one year we weren't able to get anyone to come and so my husband did it and we've been doing it ourselves ever since raising your own meat birds is actually it doesn't take a lot of time or space they're only here for 8 weeks and they just get moved around in the chicken tractor every day now my husband and the family and friends that were helping us finished outside at around 1:00 and at this point everything moves inside for the cuts in the past my husband's Aunt has come and helped us every year she came again this year she had to leave a little early but thankfully we had some friends that jump jumped in and wow it was a ton of work this year we couldn't have done it without them the kids do a lot there's surprisingly a lot that they can do to help so they were running and getting bags of ice they help us go and catch all the chickens and then when we bring it inside they help with the packaging and labeling and throughout the day there's just random odd jobs that there's always something that someone can help with this really is a a messy day I'm not going to sugarcoat it it's a messy day but considering we do it twice a year and these chickens feed our family of 12 for the whole year it's definitely worth it and because we have family and friends that come help us it really is a fun day too the kids cousins were here that day um and some friends and we they all went out swimming in the pool there were breaks where they could be out swimming and and they were just out on the trampoline and playing so um it's a lot of work but when there's a group of you doing it together and you all know that you're working for the common good of the family to provide it's also a lot of fun [Music] forg this isn't working these bags are too small okay well here you know what [Music] the last thing that we do is take the meat out and put them in our freezers and this is also something that the kids help us with this day was really full it was a lot of work there's no way we could have done it without the help of our friends and family but it felt so good at the end of the day to have all this food in our freezer for the winter the next project that we started just 2 Days Later is tackling these cucumbers on the counter it took us about a day to recover from the chicken processing the cleanup we Tred to get a lot of it done that night but all the equipment needs to be put away and that usually happens the next day but our cucumber Harvest has been really good this year we've been going out every day and picking cucumbers the kids this is also again something that they do they go out with us they love finding what's out there and I'll tell you if you ever want to try do if you've never tried cucumbers this is a great one to do with kids because you'll go out one day and the Little Cucumber will just be like one inch and then you'll go out the very next day and it's like 3 in they grow so quickly and the kids love watching it we make bread and butter pickles with our cucumbers this is a recipe I got from my mother-in-law and you can find it on the blog I'll leave the link below um it's very simple we put a little bit of garlic powder a little bit of D seed in the bottom of each jar and the kids can do this part so William is six and he put this these spices in the bottom of every jar it was really fun for him canning pickles is one job that kids can do a lot of the parts of the process pretty much everything except the canning at the very end after we put the spices in the bottom of the jar we wash the cucumbers and cut them up and then just put them in the jar fill it up to the top and I kind of think of it in terms of how much will fill a caner so first we just tried to fill seven jars we ended up getting 14 quarts from this so two canners full after we fill up the jars I bake a brine out of vinegar water and sugar I'll show you that a little bit later but um you fill the jars up with the hot Brine and then you process them when I'm canning I noticed that kids just come and go so I'll have someone stop by and eat some cucumbers as you can see and it just tends to attract kids while I was working on the Cucumbers inside my husband was outside with some other kids harvesting our potatoes there's two of wait there's three there's [Music] three back inside side we're still working on cutting the Cucumbers um this took a little bit of time but really um it went by quickly because the kids pretty much do enjoy doing this one job that someone is always doing is bringing up more jars and we always have to wash them even though they were washed before they went down to the basement I still wash them with hot water I don't completely sterilize them in boiling water I don't even use soapy water I just use nice h hot water to make sure the jars are clean here I'm making the brine that we'll put into a pan and heat on the stove we just need to heat it until the sugar is dissolved I use two parts water two parts vinegar and three parts of sugar although sometimes I'll do just a little bit less sugar maybe I'll just do equal parts of all three and then I'll do 2 tablespoons of salt I mix it on the stove top until it's really h hot and the sugar and salt are dissolved when the brine is ready we'll pour it into the jars and fill them to the top and leave a half an inch of head space then we put a little bit more garlic powder and Dill seed on top and this is a job that an older child can do so here James he's nine he is putting the spices on top and he is pouring the brine into the jars on this day our little kids did a pretty good job of entertaining themselves Ben got put a shoe in the potatoes and William is playing this manala game that some of our friends left for us so um it seemed like they were all they all did a pretty good job of just finding things to do that's not always the case um but like I've mentioned in some of my other videos when I can I do try to do it at a time or on a day when my husband is home it just makes it a lot simpler doesn't always work out that way but it really is helpful to do it when you have help if you have younger kids teaching our kids how to grow their own food how to be more self-sufficient modeling this kind of Lifestyle for them is something that's really important to me and my husband it's something that has become more important when we first started homeschooling this was not my priority I was definitely more academic and that also has its place um we do prioritize those kinds of things but especially in the summer when we're not doing as much book work we take off during the summer on paper we homeschool August through May just like the traditional school year but in the summer we focus on some of these life skills I hope this video inspired you to think about some of the skills that you want to pass down to your own kids I also invite you to watch the video we did last week where we were canning green beans thanks for watching I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms [Music]