Chicken Day !!!!

Ouch!!!!!.......... my feet were hurting sooooo bad last night, but we had a great day, fun fellowship with the folks that helped, some of the Cochran family, David our neighbor (he fixed the computer) and we butchered 55 chickens in about 3 1/2 hours. We finished up about 3:30, cleaned up had supper, then played "Balley Ball" (as Mercy calls it) with David!!! The Lord granted a successful and safe day. We have about 25 more to do this morning and then in a few weeks 25 more(the 2nd batch will be ready) and the Fleshman family and David are coming this morning, another fun day ahead!! For a refresher course this is how it went..........Daniel and Andrew do the dreaded "act" of putting the chicken in the killing cone, Caleb then takes the bird, dips it in water 145 degrees for 1 minute, Elijah then takes it over to the plucker, after that Terry and Bethany (Mr. Cochran and David helped at each station too) are the "gut guys," pulling the stuff out, head off and feet off, then they go over to the water vats where Josiah, Hosanna, Jeremiah get the little remains off leaving the birds in the water for about 25 minutes, and finally I take them inside to scrub their insides out with a brush and check them over, Anna weighs them and packages the birds up and there you have it!!!!! Joshua was a little under the weather, so he just observed. Mercy cheered our hearts, played in the water, had to be changed 3 times, took a nap, threw a cat in the water vats, played with chicken feet, cheered and told mommy "i wuv uuuu" from the sidelines as we played "Balley Ball." She asked last night if it was "church day?", I told her no, it was chicken day, and she said "Ohhhh yeahhhhhh." We are grateful for the 53 that we have sold as well and we are going to put 40 in our freezer!!!! On Wed. I was kinda getting in a dither because we only had about 8 sold and did not like the thought of buying another freezer, but by yesterday the Lord allowed the phone to ring from people spreading the word and we ended up selling 58! So thank you to all the folks that passed on the info!!!! The Lord answered our prayer of bringing buyers!!!!

Once again I missed Joel, as he was here in July 06, our first time to do this, running around and playing with Hosanna and Josiah in their little tree house. Events of us all being together bring poignant memories of my little Joel.......miss you so very much!!!!!!

Gotta be quick here, stuff to do before the others arrive, have a great Saturday with your family!!!!