Last summer I went to UK to hear Barbara Kingsolver talk about her year of eating locally and the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which documented that year. I admire her ability to make that happen without giving in to the food addictions of her family. For mine family it's macaroni and cheese that they can't live without among other things like Ale8 and Pepsi addictions.
I have been interested in sustainable living for most of my adult life. Resources are not infinite and the throw-away society we live in really bothers me, largely because of the environmental impact this lifestyle.
Last year we grew a garden for the first time in years, but the weeds took over. I just couldn't keep ahead of them. The most fertile spot on the place was also the weediest of course. So I need another strategy. Gardening guru, Dick Raymond, recommends buckwheat tilled in several times to block and kill the weeds organically. Maybe.
In step with the eating locally effort, we bought 50 baby chicks. 25 heavy roosters and 25 straight run Rhode Island Reds (a straight run is hens and roosters) for more roosters and hens for eggs. We built a portable pen that we could move so the chicks could graze and that worked well. The problem came when the chicks got to be 10 weeks old.
Chicks are ready to be harvested between 8 and 12 weeks for fryers. But they just didn't seem to be real heavy. They needed to gain more weight. It didn't take long to figure out that they weren't going to get any heavier. So I decided to start harvesting.
This is where Barbara and I came to a parting of ways. I have never done anything so awful in my life. I can't even squash a bug most of the time. Especially if it is a big juicy one. Why did I think I could do this? I struggled through 15 birds, before I called it quits.
Later, while helping Ike with some web stuff (teaching him to set up a blog and redesigning web pages) I found out that he is an expert at processing chickens. We traded. I think I got the best end of the deal. Thank goodness for web 2.0. Now to get the kids to eat chicken again since we have a freezer full of very expensive chicken.
To read his column on the experience, click here.
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