{"id":1319,"date":"2011-05-27T03:00:56","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T07:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2011-05-27T03:00:56","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T07:00:56","slug":"q-and-a-plucking-chickens-and-canning-potatoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2011\/05\/27\/q-and-a-plucking-chickens-and-canning-potatoes\/","title":{"rendered":"Q and A: Plucking chickens and Canning potatoes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Plucking chickens<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>I haven&#8217;t raised chickens for over 20 years but my grown kids convinced me to do it again so they could learn. We just finished butchering our first batch of 16 meat chickens. Is there an easy way to get out all those pin feathers? We don&#8217;t have a electric plucker &amp; have to do it by hand. The birds are only 7 weeks old &amp; still half naked but covered in pin feathers. We still have 33 more to do so we would appreciate any advice you could send our way.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Adell Struble<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Aledo, Illinois<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Be sure you scald your chickens long enough, and that the water remains hot enough. You want to scald long enough to loosen the feathers but not cause the skin to peel, too. The feathers should pull out very easily, leaving very few pin feathers. I don&#8217;t have a plucker, either, but I can pluck a chicken in about 10 minutes, pin feathers and all. I get the few pin feathers by pinching them between my knife blade and fingernail, then just pulling them on out. Then I pass the carcass over the flame on my gas stove or a small wood fire to singe off the hairs. &#8212; Jackie<\/p>\n<p><strong>Canning potatoes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Congratulations on your wedding! Is it OK to can white potatoes unpeeled? I typically can diced potatoes &#8212; not whole potatoes. There are nutrients lost when peels are discarded.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Lois Harper<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Huntsville, Alabama<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Thank you for your congratulations. Yes, you can home can white, unpeeled potatoes but the peels on larger potatoes are tougher, canned. I can up small russets, whole, then squeeze the potato out of the tough skins, like a grape. Of course, you can also eat them, too. &#8212; Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plucking chickens I haven&#8217;t raised chickens for over 20 years but my grown kids convinced me to do it again so they could learn. We just finished butchering our first batch of 16 meat chickens. Is there an easy way to get out all those pin feathers? We don&#8217;t have a electric plucker &amp; have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,11,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}