Turkeys Near the End at Ebey Farms
It was with some relief that I found a farm in the Snohomish Slough selling live birds and teaching city folks like me how to butcher them. Since we didn’t need a bird, Bruce at the Ebey Farm graciously let us come observe his process.
With Vic looking for some educational honesty about where his food comes from, we made the 45 minute trip up north for a morning of blood, guts, and food.
Here’s a picture guide through the process:
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Bruce starts off by showing everyone how to hold the knife close and tight, so that it feels an extension of your finger. The work is close and requires one be steady and precise. The job also requires plenty of sharp knifes; they go dull quickly. |
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To be as humane as possible to the lively birds, they are placed in a drum filled with a welding gas mixture. It knocks them out so they won’t feel the next bit. |
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The turkey, now passed out, is placed in a cone. The use of the cone is smart, even if the turkey is awake, as it presses the wings close and helps calm the turkey who is curious about being upside down. In my family, we hung them from rafters and once you slit the throat they flapped madly and dangerously, while spewing blood everywhere. Unlike the movies, you make two slits under the jaw on either vein. It’s not a straight across cut. |
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After the bird has bled (a couple minutes) it is time to pull the tail and wing feathers. This is a tough job and requires strength and maybe some pliers. With the bird still in the cone, it’s easier to get the leverage required to do this without breaking the quills. |
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To pluck the rest of the feathers easily, the turkey is dunked for a minute or two into some water at approximately 150 degrees. It’s important that it’s not too hot or it will cook the skin. Dunk, swish, check the feathers. If they easily come out, it’s ready for plucking. |
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With as the couple hundred turkeys that Ebey Farms butchers, it would take a long time to pluck the birds by hand. Instead they have a automatic turkey plucker, which is one of the more interesting devices I’ve seen all year. A centrifuge with stiff rubber “bolts” or “fingers”, the turkey is placed inside and while water is added, and spins crazily until it is free of feathers!
As Vic pointed out, this is when he stopped thinking about the turkey as a bird pecking in the pasture and starting thinking about it as food in the kitchen. |
 
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There still some finishing work to do when the turkey comes out of the plucking machine. This work is done on a separate table from where the gutting will happen. Through the entire process, it is important to keep everything clean and not to contaminate surfaces. All the exterior work happens on a different table than the interior work. Once one bird is done, things are hosed off, knives are cleaned before beginning again. It’s now that the feet are cut carefully off at the knee joint. |
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The turkey is then moved to the cleaning table and work begins by removing the head, leaving as much as the neck for gravy as possible. The basic organs of a turkey as attached in only two places: at the front of the breast cavity and at the anus. The job now is to free those two spots. |
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This is Bruce freeing the esophagus. It’s quite a job to carefully cut it free and as you work it down into the chest cavity, you free it with your fingers. (ed. note: this was the bit we actually found hardest to do at the Capitol Hill Turkey Transition.) |
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Next, it’s time to move to the other end of the turkey. There’s a small oil gland on the back of the tail that is cut off. Then the anus is cut out and the body cavity opened. This is accomplished by carefully pinching the vent (you don’t want that stuff coming out), cutting around it, and then slicing up to the breast bone to make a hole big enough for the hand to get in. |
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It’s warm of course as you reach your hand it to pull out the entrails. If the esophagus is freed, it should just take one firm pull to get the entire entrails free. The hardest bit was getting the lungs. They are surprisingly small and break apart very easy. |
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Once the entrails are out, the turkey can be rinsed, formed, and bagged. If you like making good gravy, it’s time to sort through the entrails for the organ meat: liver, kidneys, heart, and gizzard. I found the gizzard the most interesting. |
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Once it is sliced open, the stones and food are scraped out and the lining is disposed off. It is fascinating to see the bits in it. (ed. the Capitol Hill turkeys had a screw and cup hook in theirs!) |
So that’s a turkey turned to meat to eat. We were really grateful to Bruce and his helpers in showing us this process and guiding others through it. It was a powerful reminder that if you choose to eat meat, there is a life behind it and that it should be a good life lived and then taken thoughtfully and with gratitude. Both Vic and I are going to work on eating less meat and choosing what meat we do buy more carefully.
In addition to turkeys, Ebey Farms also has chickens, pigs, and even a few head of cattle. I’d be interested in finding folks to go in on a pig but would want to be there to help at the butchering.
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Thanks for the nice pictorial of the turkey processing. We are going to grow out turkeys this year, I am always looking for more information.
If you have trouble finding friends to share a pig with, you might consider going alone.
My wife and I buy a pig at a time. We don’t slaughter / butcher, but the farmer has that all arranged with a USDA inspected processor. We find that between the two of us, we eat a pig in six to eight months. That’s a little longer than optimal for meat storage, but we haven’t noticed any degredation. The meat from a single pig fits into a pair of large coolers. It takes up about half of a 5 cubic foot freezer.
We brine hams and bacon. The rest of the meat we cook fresh. We get a lot of chops, roasts and hams, bacon, hocks for soup, fat for rendering, bones for the dog. By the time we are done paying the farmer for the pig and the butcher, the resulting meat comes in at about 2.80 a pound. Obviously not a financial advantage over the supermarket. But I would assume you are more interested in the quality and control.