Gris: Off to see the gizzard
JONES COUNTY -- Today’s topic is chicken gizzards.
Yes, that’s right. We’re off to see the gizzard.
Chickens don’t have teeth. The gizzard is an organ in their digestive tracts that they use to crush and grind their food.
People, in turn, eat gizzards. ... Well, some people.
In the South, we fry them. (Actually, we fry almost everything.) We serve fried gizzards with collards and mashed potatoes.
They are comfort food, and, in some countries, they are considered a delicacy. For most, though, they are an acquired taste.
(Hold your tongue and count your blessings. I could be writing about chitlins, which I might remind you are pig intestines.)
Mary Murray and her mother, Pat Theriault, are the Gizzard Queens. They don’t necessarily eat gizzards all the time, unless they happen to be on the buffet line at the Golden Corral.
Pat and Mary do their part, however, to keep gizzard lovers happy.
They are the second- and third-generation owners of DeLong’s Gizzard Equipment. DeLong’s is the leading provider of replacement rollers for poultry gizzard processing machinery in the world. It is the only company that specializes in making the components used to process gizzards.
DeLong’s makes more than 100 parts for companies that manufacture the processing machinery. It employs eight full-time workers at a 5,000-square-foot building nestled deep in the woods off Garrison Road.
It is a small operation that carries a big stick.
“The name DeLong will get you in the door of any poultry plant in the country,” Pat said.
Said Mary: “It would be hard to find anyone in the industry that has touched a chicken product that hasn’t touched one of our rollers.”
At DeLong’s, the shop talk is about gizzard harvesters, neck and thigh rollers, gut gears, de-fatters, re-peel tables and turkey breast membrane skinners.
Poultry in motion.
All those moving parts may not mean much to you, but try dressing your own bucket of bird before your next tailgate party.
The thick, muscular walls of the gizzard are protected by a non-edible skin, known in the industry as the “yellow lining.”
The lining must be removed, and all the heavy lifting is done by machine parts created right here in Middle Georgia. They work, Pat said, like the inside of a pencil sharpener.
Even though she is now retired from the daily grind, Pat still finds herself critiquing packaged gizzards in the meat department at the grocery store. She is passionate about the quality of the cuts.
Make no mistake about this Cluck Dynasty. The legacy is long at DeLong’s.
Pat’s father, Horace DeLong, began in his hometown of Gainesville, the “Poultry Capital of the World.” He was born in 1928 and got a job at a chicken processing plant after World War II. Horace met his wife, Christine, while working there. He would hang the chickens from the shackles. She would cut up the meat. They married in 1947.
He went to work for Gainesville Machine Co. in 1950 and gained valuable experience in the industry. He invented a counter rotating picker to de-feather the birds. He was proud of his innovation, and it became one of the four patents he owned.
In 1972, he moved his family to Jones County. He had no local ties, except for a brother who lived in Milledgeville. He also had hunted in the area.
What appealed to him was the number of poultry processing plants within a 60-mile radius. There was Cagle’s in Macon, Perdue Farms in Perry and Tyson in Vienna, to name a few.
For years, Horace and his crew would install and troubleshoot the machinery at poultry operations across the South.
Pat started working for her father when she was 12, doing everything from sweeping the floors to learning to keep the books. He taught her how to weld and every detail of the mechanical operation.
When she took over as owner and president of the company in 1987, her father handed her a machine manual, a “Who’s Who” book of the poultry industry, and a telephone. Horace died in 1992, and Pat passed the torch to Mary eight years ago.
They sometimes refer to it as the three eras -- the Horace Era, the Pat Era and the Mary Era. Each was built upon the success of forefathers and foremothers. Pat added consulting as part of the business. Mary helped usher in the age of automation.
It has remained a family affair. Mary’s husband, Robb, works in outside sales and is the high yield management team director. Her cousin Josh Harris also grew up with “poultry processing in his DNA.” He serves as an engineer and production manager. Mary’s sons, Trey and Nate, hope to become the fourth generation at the helm.
When Mary attends the International Poultry Expo at the World Congress Center in Atlanta every January, she often hears stories about her grandfather. He was a legend, the Colonel Sanders and Truett Cathy of poultry processing.
Fall is one of the busiest times of the year for DeLong’s, with heavy demand for parts during the approaching Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Whole turkeys are usually packaged with giblets -- a culinary term for the gizzards, neck, liver, heart and other parts that are used to make the traditional giblet gravy and stew.
So the wheels are turning.
When she meets people for the first time, Mary usually tells them she “works at a machine shop.” She saves her breath and spares the details. It’s not easy explaining gizzards.
“It’s not just a one-liner,” she said, laughing.
Long live the Gizzard Queens.
Contact Gris at 744-4275 or egrisamore@macon.com.
This story was originally published September 18, 2014 at 10:42 PM with the headline "Gris: Off to see the gizzard."