Oh Yes We Did

We are real farmers now.

I guess I just felt like a serious gardener before. Even though we are growing enough vegetables and eggs to supply our needs, I didn't really consider myself a farmer.

Now, however, I think we can upgrade that status.

In September, we had 15 day-old fluff ball chicks sent to us in the mail. Those chicks quickly grew in a chicken tractor in the garden, and now they [most of them, anyway] are sleeping eternally in our freezer, waiting for their turn to be dinner.

We did it! We are now raising our own meat, which is something we've been wanting to do for a long time. We're starting with chickens, and we already have plans for pigs in the spring.

Yesterday was our third day harvesting [as we like to say] the chickens. The first two days we finished three birds and yesterday we did four. Only five left.... It is hard work, and there is definitely a learning curve [all of our instruction has been thanks to YouTube].

For future harvests, we are going to build some equipment [killing cones, plucking machine] that will make the work much easier and faster. But for now it's all [wo]man power, and I tell you that plucking chickens is not my favorite activity.

To begin, I hold the bird in my lap. After a minute spent petting and calming it, I wrap the chicken in a towel and hold him upside down [being restrained and inverted calms the bird]. After expressing our gratitude and love, Anthony cuts the arteries on either side of the neck and the blood drains out. The bird stays pretty quiet, but there are jerks and spasms as the spirit leaves the body. I hang on tight, sending off my blessings as the chicken dies in my hands.

After the bird is just a body, Anthony has the grisly job of chopping off the head with a hatchet. I tried to do it once and will not try again unless under dire circumstances. I then dip the chicken in a pot of 140 degree water for about 10 seconds, after which the feathers come out just like butter. Kind of. Sometimes.

Plucking the chicken is really my main duty in all of this. Either I'm not very good at it or I'm not doing it the most efficient way or it's actually just really hard and annoying, but it takes me a long time and I find it impossible to get all of the little quills out. You see, it's not hard to get the actual feathers out. But what you might not know is that under all those feathers, there's a whole bunch of little quill feathers just waiting to grow up. And picking all those suckers out is the really tedious part.

After I have plucked the chicken as much as possible, I hand it over to Anthony. He removes the digestive tract and all those innards we don't eat [although we do save the heart, the gizzard, and the liver]. I did gut one bird, and it wasn't so bad. I'll do it again, but for now Anthony is much faster.

        









The last little job is peeling the scales off the chicken feet [another tedious job]. Did you know chicken feet are a nutritional treasure? In fact, I recommend you go to your local farmer's market and find someone who can sell you some. Make stock with them, and you will have the richest, most nutritious, gelatinous broth you can imagine. I almost consider it worth raising my own chickens just for the feet.

So yes, we did it. I'm really proud of us. And even though I can't say that I love killing chickens, I love raising my own food. I will do it again. And again. Many people I know tell me they could never eat something they've raised, but I find it hard to eat an animal whose conditions in life and death are unknown.

I want to be connected to my food, to the nourishment I bring into my body. I want to know the animals I consume had a good life and a loving death. Jai said a couple of times that killing the chickens is sad, and I agree with him. It is sad. And I think fully accepting the fact that an animal died so we can eat is an important concept to understand [and one that many people in our culture don't even think about]. It is not just some meat in some package from some store; it belonged to a living, breathing animal full of spirit. That animal died so we could eat. I have great respect and deep gratitude for that, and I want to pass that respect and gratitude on to my children.

 Even though we haven't actually eaten one of our chickens yet, just the act of growing and harvesting them has been deeply nourishing. I am deeply, deeply grateful for our chickens.

*Love*