a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Tag: Birds

  • Where Do You Want Your Chicken to Come From?

    Foster Farms, Livingston
    Foster Farms, Livingston

    Where would you prefer to get your chicken? From a plant like this Foster Farms processing plant which was recently closed due to cockroach infestation? At a plant like this, up to 140 chickens move through the processing line a minute. That is more than two chickens a second. And the chicken processing companies want to speed these processing lines up to 175 chickens per minute.

    Butchering Cabin
    Butchering Cabin

    Or would you rather get your chickens from a quiet cabin in the woods where chickens are butchered just one at a time, and only five or so chickens are ever butchered in a single day, with each one being handled with great care?

    Chickens at a man and his hoe never leave their home. They are never transported in crowded containers to processing plants miles from home. Instead, they are carefully caught, and once caught, their heads are covered with soft towels to keep them calm. They never see what is happening to them, and the other chickens never see another chicken being butchered.

    It is your choice.

    Butchering Kitchen
    Butchering Kitchen

     

    Processed chickens
    Processed chickens

  • Roasting a Rooster

    This is a seven and a half month old Golden Buff rooster, butchered at 224 days, and let to rest for four days in the refrigerator. Three to four days is a good time to let a chicken rest before roasting, especially these chickens which exercise so much every day.

    Roasting a rooster step 1
    Roasting a rooster step 1
    Roasting a rooster step 2
    Roasting a rooster step 2
    Roasting a rooster step 3
    Roasting a rooster step 3
    Roasting a rooster step 4
    Roasting a rooster step 4
    Roasting a rooster step 5
    Roasting a rooster step 5
    Roasting a rooster step 6
    Roasting a rooster step 6
    Roasting a rooster step 7
    Roasting a rooster step 7
    Roasting a rooster step 8
    Roasting a rooster step 8
    Roasting a rooster step 9
    Roasting a rooster step 9
    Roasting a rooster step 10
    Roasting a rooster step 10

    These are not birds which sit around all day, doing nothing but eating and growing fat. They aren’t crowded together cheek by jowl. What they do provide is a big story and a big taste. A chicken does a lot of living in seven months. As chickens go, it’s seen the world, traveled far from it’s roost every day, had the chance to experience romance and live a full life. At times they go so deep into the woods they can’t see another chicken. You’ll never find chicken like this in your supermarket.

  • 17 Day Old Chicks

    [wpvideo hq3ogWOU]

    At 17 days of age, these chicks are spending most of the day outdoors. Their mother takes them outside at the crack of dawn in search of good things to eat. In a matter of hours, they will travel further than broiler chickens travel their entire lives. When you see how far chickens like to go in search of food, you understand how intolerable it is to raise them in densities of one chicken per square foot. With a mother, chicks enjoy a very rich life.

  • Fresh Liver

    Fresh Liver
    Fresh Liver

    You’ll never find liver like this in the store. Liver from chickens which exercise much of the day, get plenty of fresh air and sunshine, is plump and dry.

    When chickens are out walking all day, rummaging for food, playing, and having a good time, they are pumping copious amounts of oxygenated blood through their bodies, much like people who exercise. Chickens raised in cramp quarters and butchered at a very young age, never attain the level of health of chickens raised outdoors. And this shows in the quality of their livers.

    Cooked Liver
    Cooked Liver

    Fried in butter, chicken fat, or olive oil for several minutes on each side, it has so much flavor that no salt is needed. In fact,  you should first taste it before adding any salt. Often salt, instead of enhancing the flavor of foods, just makes foods taste like salt.

    Dish of Liver
    Dish of Liver

    Liver is best eaten within a few hours of processing a chicken. Are there any stores which sell chicken liver from chickens butchered that day? Let me know if you find one. The next time you buy chicken liver in a store, ask the grocer when the liver was taken. If they don’t know, what does that say about their concern for the quality of the food they sell to you?

  • Eggs of many colors and shapes

    Eggs of All Shapes
    Eggs of all shapes
    Beautiful Eggs
    Beautiful eggs

    Collecting eggs is always an adventure. An old trick I use to get hens to lay in certain nests is to keep some wooden eggs in the nest. Many hens prefer to lay eggs where other hens have.

    With eggs coming in so many different shades and sizes, why do large egg producers insist on packaging identical eggs in the same carton? Wouldn’t it be more exciting if every carton looked different inside? When I mentioned once to a clerk that I had chickens and that they laid eggs of various colors, she said that she once received a variety of eggs from a friend. She was thrilled at the various colors of the eggs, but her children refused to eat any of them. They would only eat perfectly white supermarket eggs. In a way it’s sad that most children have no idea how varied chicken eggs can be.