Sheep Harvest

There are several different techniques and philosophies behind meat harvesting. Although we harvested the ducks by hand – knife to throat, bleeding them to unconsciousness and onto death – S prefers to put larger animals down with a small gun before bleeding them. It's easier for both the farmer and the animal this way. Rather than trying to hold down and slit the throat of a thrashing, 50-pound-plus quadruped, a quick shot to the head knocks the beast out, allowing the farmer to bleed it as quickly as a bird. Some people do harvest larger animals as we did the ducks - this is actually the method of slaughter mandated by both the Bible and the Quran - but having wrestled with these animals in the course of our work, we are believers in the gun method for anything over, say, 25 pounds. A sudden death is not only more humane but also keeps the meat tasty – fear releases a lot of adrenaline into an animals system and this changes the flavor of the flesh.

The lamb (any sheep younger than 2 is still a lamb) was tied to a stand of trees apart from the rest of the flock. This allowed S a clean shot with a .22 riffle, hitting the spot where the skull meets the spinal cord. It looked like the sheep collapsed the moment we heard the sound. It literally never knew what hit it. S went right over to the sheep and bled it into the trees. It kicked a bit as its nerves shut down but appeared not to suffer in any way.

Each grabbing a leg, we carried the carcass to the shed where we strung it securely upside-down in a door frame. S slit around the back ankles and drew the knife up the inside of each hind leg. He began to peel off the skin, using the knife when necessary for leverage and to loosen the thick layer of white tissue that attaches the skin to the muscle. Systematically working down the carcass in this manner, cutting guiding lines, scraping tissue with the knife, S was able to work the skin down around the head of the lamb in one piece. This took surprisingly little time.

After removing the penis and cutting out the urethra - very delicate work if you want to preserve the meat - S made an incision into the abdomen starting at the anus. With short, quick strokes, he slit open the sheep, and the internal organs cascaded out of of the abdomen into a garbage can we had strategically placed to catch everything. It was amazing to see the organs of the lower abdomen intact, arranged like human organs, just spilling out so easily. As with the ducks removing the organs from the upper abdomen took a bit more work. The heart and liver had to be scooped out, and the lungs had to be plucked from sacs attached to either side of the rib cage.

The skinning of the sheep took much longer, perhaps twice as long, as the actual cleaning. Once all the organs were removed, S cut off the head to be buried with the other organs. We untied the carcass from where it was still suspended in the door frame and carried it inside. S butchered it on the kitchen counter. This wasn't a professional job, mind you, but he did good work, snapping through major joints and sectioning each major anatomical piece. We didn't touch the knife but were more directly involved than at any earlier part of the process. We handled what S handed us, rinsing each piece in cold water, placing them in bags, labeling, and finally freezing them.

In addition to identifying each cut as processed the carcass, S told us about how he had learned to harvest meat. It was interesting stuff but too lengthy to list here.