It was time. The turkey was big and fat. Thanksgiving was coming. The bird had to die. LOL. We borrowed a huge pot essentially. In German it's called a maul groughpen. (my spelling) It has a metal bottom piece that holds a huge metal bowl. Under the bowl there is a door where you put a propane torch and this heats up the bowl and you can cook with it, render lard or scald birds. With big gatherings they make soup in these things and it's amazing how many people you can feed with 20 gallons of soup!! 20 gallons is roughly what it holds. It's perfect for scalding turkeys. We only had the one so Papa just held it. But if you had more then 5 turkeys you'd really want a dipper on a board, lever style. As it was it took both Papa and I to get him out of the water that last time. We set the kids in front of a movie, with Baby R in her exersauser and headed out to butcher him. I had set everything up in place during nap time and so all we had to do was light the torch and start. Papa lit the torch and killed the 5 roosters someone gave us. Then while the water heated for the turkey I split the breasts open on the roo's and took out the breast meat. The rest of the bird went to the pigs. (we had the breasts for supper the next night with friends. YUM) By the time I was done the water was about to temp and Papa went and caught the turkey. I thought it would take a bit but Papa just walked in, picked him up and walked out. We have a stump with 2 nails in it and Papa put his head in between them and handed me the turkeys legs. CHOP went his head!! Back went Momma!! I just about landed on my rear!!! The turkey flapped his wings after he died and I was trying to hold him still and getting pulled and pushed and manhandled by a dead turkey. Papa started yelling "LET GO" and I finally heard him and dropped that big old turkey!! We think he weighed between 25 and 30 lbs dressed out.
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