[Sca-cooks] dead Turkeys was chicken plucking

[Louise Smithson]

All this talk about the smell of dead chickens reminds me of my youth.
My Father is a butcher and until I was 16 we lived above the actual shop.  Christmas dinner in England is now definately Turkey day.  This meant that in the month of December approximately 200 or so Turkeys would arrive at the shop that would need dressing.  They were all fresh birds and arried plucked, but with their inards inside them (birds keep fresher/longer that way).
This meant that I  learnt the gentle art of evisceration at the tender age of around 7 or so, although I wasn't allowed to wield the knives until later (like 9, we learnt how to handle the knives very early on, a matter of necessity seeing as there were so many).
Trust me after about a week of Turkey gutting, everything smells like Turkey guts.  You, your clothes, all your food, everything.
Then of course there was the year they arrived with ALL their wing feathers on, me and my sister were official pluckers that year.  It wasn't child labor, just a case of necessity meaning that everyone lent a hand.  Besides which I thought that it was fun.
Little did I know how much I learnt just by seeing it done everyday.
And yes I always knew my meat came from animals, once you have seen a whole lamb/pig/cow brought in and rendered into chops/roasts/sausages etc.  you get the idea.
Never saw meat in little plastic trays until years later, real butchers don't do it that way.
Helewyse de Birkestad