I slaughtered a rooster today! To be fair, I held the rooster while Farmer Joachim did the chopping, as the good farmer did not want to be responsible for any loss of fingers on my part, but I'm going to go ahead and say that's the hard part, as one must continue holding tightly for a number of minutes lest one wishes to have a very literal "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" sort of situation. Which almost happened. But I held tight whilst the blood removed itself from its previous location within the rooster. Matthias did the same with the second bird.
We brought our two freshly headless prizes into the outdoor kitchen area where, like two old Caribbean ladies, we dunked them in baths of boiling water and proceeded to remove all the feathers. Hella old school. And let me tell you, mad respect to those old Caribbean ladies, because that shit ain't easy, and it takes a long time when you're not a practiced hand. After the plucking's done, the feets gotta come off (no, we didn't fry them and eat them) and the bird must be opened and cleaned. I will say that I did not pull out the guts with my bare hands - that, I let farm-child Matthias do. One step at a time.
In any case, we got it done, cleaned up the bits, and threw it in the oven. Time from live chicken to chicken on the plate: about three hours. Don't get much more local than that, folks. I admit that the morning's events were still a bit fresh in my mind by the time lunch rolled around, but hey, that's how these things go. I feel like if I want to eat meat, I should have the experience of slaughtering it myself. I'm not going to say it was fun, but it was an experience worth having. And if you're like "Hexinaw you didn't do that you're a liar," here are some photos!
Moving right along... Saturday morning was spent at the market in the village of Möglingen, selling everything we pull out of the ground all week. And I had a really good time. Finally, something my theatre training is actually good for! I've always been pretty good at the whole customer service thing, and I'm great at flirting with old ladies, so I did good. And selling something I know is of the highest quality and good for folks and such made it especially rewarding. Farmer Joachim clearly has a strong customer base and basically knew almost everyone who came to the stand. We chilled with the customers, ate delicious sweeties from the bakery across the street, munched on amazing green-onion cream cheese from the nice cheese lady at the stall next door, and made some bank slinging nutritious veggies. I could get used to that.
Yesterday I went to an outdoor climbing cliff with the daughters, Afra and Fabienne, who are both very nice young ladies. We rolled out in Farmer Joachim's 60's Mercedes and got dropped off at a beautiful "Weinberg" (vineyard on a hillside), at the top of which stood a bunch of massive rock faces suitable for climbing. The amazing thing about Germany is, whether in the middle of Berlin or out in the countryside, there tend to be climbing walls free and open to the public. All you really need are a couple of sturdy metal rings in the right places on the rock and if you've got the gear, you're good to go; the costs of installing these rings are usually taken care of by some German climbing club or another. And then it's "Climb At Your Own Risk, and if you don't know what you're doing, that's not our fault!" I don't think I have to tell my American audience why that's pretty amazing.
The small gorge where most of the climbing takes place was serene and beautiful; it really looked like something out of a movie set, with the colors all perfectly suited and the ivy hanging just so. If we go back, I'll remember to bring my camera. Of course, I wasn't thirty seconds on the wall when a HUGE storm rolled in and put an end to that nonsense. Seeing as our gear was still attached up top, we had to wait a half hour for the wind to die down before I could climb to the top of this narrow outcropping and army-crawl across to unhook our carabiner. We climbed back down the trail to the street, sopping wet and muddy to boot, where Joachim swung into the parking lot and pulled out a pizza from the back seat. I'd say a good trip, all in all.
Overall, I'm still really enjoying my time here. The second week was a little rough, as Farmer Julia said it would be - one doesn't have the "new" energy of the first week, but it's still too early to have really gotten used to the work and the hours and such. But when Grandma eats three pieces of your zucchini bread, you start to feel it. The lifestyle here is waaay different than anything I've ever experienced, and it's not always easy to handle. There is very little break between work and life, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Then again, maybe that's how it should be. It wasn't too long ago that a majority of the population slept where they worked and worked where they slept and had real passion for their jobs as the people here do. And given that at least one of the daughters is going to become a farmer as well, they must be doing something right. I am still in some ways addicted to the stress and energy of living in a city, but for now, I'm content to hang out in my barn loft and get woken up by the braying of a goat.
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