Slaughter House

Today at the farm we took a trip down to the slaughterhouse in Groton with two lambs and two kids. The slaughterhouse is called Blood Farms. As ironic as it may be, the owner's last name is Blood. Immediately when I got out of the truck, the first thing I walk up to is a garbage bin full of cow organs. I took a few minutes to look at what was in the bucket. As foul as it may have been, I have never seen any sort of internal organs right in front of me; therefore I was interested and wasn't bothered by the sight.

When we opened the doors to holding pen, the first thing I noticed were the bright red puddles on the floor. I wasn't surprised by the blood considering it is a slaughterhouse, however I did wonder why it hadn't been cleaned up. None of the process bothered me at all knowing that the animals slaughtered at Blood Farms were raised healthy and were well cared for. It wasn't hard for me to leave them there because that's how families get food to eat.

After we put the animals in their pen, the owner's father took us on a tour of the farm. He showed us the smoker, which was full of pig ears and ham. He also showed us a finished product before it is packaged and sent back to the farm where the meat came from. After, he showed us the hides from the cattle they had slaughtered and he also showed us a bucket full of crowns. Crowns are the cattle's horns although they sometimes include the skull. They had no use for the crowns at the farm so he gave us a couple. Back at the farm we buried the crowns in the compost pile so that insects can eat all the meat off and we can dig them up and we have a clean crown.

In a few weeks or so, we will drive back out to Groton to pick up the meat from the animals we had dropped off. The meat we get back is frozen and stored in a freezer at the farm. When the sale freezers run out of meat, we price the different meats according to weight and quality stock sale freezers. Not only does Codman Farm sell goat and lamb meat, we also sell pork, beef, and eggs. Seeing the slaughterhouse was an interesting experience, however it does not look like a place where I would like to spend much time.