I’ve Been Adopted… or Abducted

My new farm is an apple orchard is run by Claire and Brian, a couple in their fifties, along with Dylan, their ten-year-old son. This is the type of struggling organic farm I expected to find more often when I first started WWOOFing. To supplement their farm income, Claire works as a midwife and Brian picks up carpentry jobs whenever he can. Brian also makes deliveries for the local Montana Growers Cooperative once or twice a week, but these side gigs aren’t making anyone rich. Claire and Brian both work long days to scrape by and make ends meet, and WWOOFers are the only other support they get.

For me, this means long work days—and lots of them. My last two farms each required four to five hour work days five days a week. Here, I work anywhere from eight to twelve hours every single day.

To be fair, we rarely reach the twelve hour mark, and Claire and Brian have had no problem with me cutting my workdays short every now and then so I can meet up with friends from my last farm up the road. On the day I arrived, I asked Brian what kind of schedule was expected of me and he told me they don’t hold their volunteers to schedules, adding that as long as he feels I’m regularly putting in good work he’ll be happy. They both thank me often for working so hard, so I feel I’m fulfilling their expectations.

The long days are definitely taking their toll on me; my energy drains fast and I feel worn out and exhausted all the time. I don’t doubt they’d be okay with me working less, but it’s hard to stop when I know they really need the help. For example, when apples start to fall off a tree, that tree needs to be picked fast to avoid losing the fruit (apples that hit the ground are unsalable because the fall causes them to bruise and spoil easily). Losing that crop means a lost profit for an already tight budget, so when Claire needs to spend the day making apple butter for the farmer’s market and Brian has to put in a few hours moving irrigation pipes, I find it difficult to stop working instead of picking that tree.

By the way, it’s a heck of a lot of work to pick an apple tree.


It helps that Brian and Claire are so appreciative, and they do take good care of me here. This is the first farm where I really feel I’m part of the family. We eat all our meals together, take bike rides together, watch movies together and spend most of our evenings just hanging out together in the house or playing games. They even took me to the Western Montana Fair so I could see Dylan’s award-winning 4-H chicken—paid my admission and insisted on treating me to a big plate of sweet potato fries, and Dylan was really excited to show me his prize bird and blue ribbon. I did happen to notice that every single animal in the room had a blue ribbon on its cage, but I decided to keep that to myself.

It didn’t take long for me to fall into the routine at this place, and more than once I’ve caught myself about to call Claire “mom” or fight over Legos with Dylan like I once did with my brothers. That’s pretty cool to me, especially considering that at my last farm it was awkward just walking into the house for the food I was working for.

Then again, I have considered the possibility that Claire and Brian are employing some complicated brainwashing tactics to gradually convince me that they really are my parents so that I feel obliged to give them free labor for the rest of my life. Although I haven’t found any evidence yet, I have a sinking suspicion they may be part of some freaky apple-worshiping cult. I also think they may be after my hair.

Just to be safe, I keep a secret stash of my mom’s famous pumpkin cookies in the tipi. That taste is a jolt back to my childhood their mind control techniques can’t even begin to compete against. Yeah, I’m that clever. One step ahead, all the time.

Being a WWOOFer, you learn to be prepared for situations like this. There are a lot of weirdos out there.

The Great Chicken Massacre

Julie’s sister, Amy, has taken on the responsibility of raising chickens here. After several weeks of feeding and fattening, their day finally came. Anna and I both got up an hour early so that we wouldn’t miss an ounce of education.

The first step was to pack them up. Amy started with 100 chickens, but after foxes, coyotes and some leg infirmity not uncommon with their breed, she was left with 62. All the same, they filled up the truck in no time. We used every cage and cardboard box we could find, and we were constantly poking heads, wings and legs back through the cracks from which they emerged. It may have seemed cruel to pack them like sardines, but bear in mind that aside from this hour, these birds have had happy free range lives.

Once loaded up, we drove the birds down the road to Leroy, the neighborhood Amish farmer/butcher. Leroy had visited our farm before on his bicycle, so we all knew and liked him. Who knew that such a friendly guy could shed so much blood with such ease? Always the quiet ones, right?

I toured the death chamber while Leroy suited up. There were a few tubes and gadgets I couldn’t figure out, but it all became clear quickly. When Leroy returned, he handed each of us an apron and told us to start shoving birds into the cones. Then he sharpened his knife.

There were four cones on a rotating post. It was a little tricky getting the chickens in them, especially if I didn’t have a good grip on their wings, but once inside they calmed down and actually seemed very comfortable. Right when they probably thought they could trust us again, Leroy spun the post and slit their throats, quickly and smoothly.

He left them there to drain for a couple minutes, and their bodies went totally berserk in the cones. I didn’t get to see one run around with its head cut off, but I’m sure this was the stage where that would have happened. After they drained sufficiently—the floor completely red with blood—Leroy tossed them into a vat of hot water, which he said helped the feathers come out neatly. Once they were done with the bath, he tossed all four of them into the defeatherer. This was a large steel vat filled with lots of rubber bumpers. When he turned it on, the whole thing vibrated and the birds’ bodies rumbled around. I have no idea how anyone discovered this would cause their feathers to fall out, but it worked like a charm without bruising the birds. It actually looked like a fun ride if it were big enough—and if I didn’t worry that it would cause all my hair to fall out.

(One peculiar thing about the defeatherer was that it ran on electricity. This being an Amish farm, and Leroy being Amish, I thought that a bit strange. When I asked about it later, I was told that the Amish people here have unique rules. Apparently, electricity is allowed if it’s off the grid—powered by a generator—and if it’s for commercial use. I think the Pennsylvania Dutch back east would have a problem with this, but I doubt they ‘d fight over it.)

After defeathering, Leroy yanked the head off a bird with his bare hands (which made a distinct popping noise) and shoved the body into a tube that launched it into a basin of water in the next room. He then led our whole crew to that room where he introduced us to his daughter, Heidi, and put us all to work. After some basic training, we had a very efficient evisceration assembly line running.

Heidi took the birds out of the pool and cut off their feet. Then they were passed to Anna and Tom, Amy’s father, who yanked out most of the organs and cut the esophagi. After that, they came to me. I was given a nifty little lung-scraping tool and had to rip the lungs out of the chest cavity. I dare say, I got pretty good at it and ended up with an impressive bucket of chicken lungs before we went home. I then passed what was left to Amy, who inspected the carcasses for any unwanted parts we may have missed, hosed them off and tossed them into a large cooler filled with ice water.

We got through our 62 in no time, then agreed to stick around for another 14 birds that someone else dropped off. Believe it or not, I was a little sad when it was over; I felt like I was getting better at lung scraping every minute and really wanted to hone my new skill. You never know when that will come in handy.

Need a lung scraped? Just give me a call.

I had never seen anything slaughtered before that day. I was warned that it could be heavier than I’d expect and I braced myself for it, but it really wasn’t bad. I did feel a little queasy after the first blood draining session and stepped outside for some fresh air, but then it didn’t bother me. And I learned that you really shouldn’t name an animal that’s going to be slaughtered. It’s just a bad idea.

That night, Anna and I had a feast. She managed to claim the smallest bird because it was the only one that would fit in our toaster over. We each had only roasted a chicken once before, and neither of us remembered any details about it, but we figured it out. That fresh bird was DE-LISH! Probably the best meal we’ve had yet. Plus, I won the wishbone.

Can’t wait to see what we kill next.