Chicken Harvest

The mantra in our family is “Eat locally, in season, and know where your food comes from.” If you don’t grow it yourself, know the folks that do, well enough to ask about their families. It crystallizes an understanding that the grocery store is the middle man, not producer, in the food chain. And honestly, at the end of the day, what is more important than the food you put into your body, several times a day, every day, to keep it chugging along? So it was with absolute delight that we spent the weekend at our friend’s farm in Clintonville, Wisconsin, reaping the season’s bounty.

Before I go on, I’ll say this. I was a vegetarian for many years. But I got better.

The more I thought about my own vegetarianism, the more I came to understand that it just wasn’t the moral and ecological high ground I once thought it was. This is not to say it isn’t right for others. It just wasn’t right for me any more. I came back to meat one day when I was pregnant with Ella, and at a conference for work. They were serving turkey sandwiches and the usual bland vegetarian option, something like hummus on soggy bread. And I could not stand. One. More. Effing. Hummus. Sandwich.

So help me God.

I glanced around the room to see if anyone was watching the vegetarian gone bad, and quickly scooped up the turkey sandwich. My first in fifteen years. I’d like to say that at that moment I had some profound moral dilemma, that I had real inner debate, or even a few vague misgivings. But I did not. I annihilated that turkey sandwich, and as I ate it, the only real thought I had was, “This needs salt.”

I guess I am just not that deep.

And over the past year, now back in the ranks of omnivores, I decided that if I am going to eat meat, I must be intimately acquainted with how it is raised, killed and prepared. It is my duty not to deceive myself into thinking that chicken packages itself into neat little cubes ready for me to pick up in the freezer section. Or that cows enjoy standing shoulder to shoulder in inches of their own excrement without even enough room to turn around.

And so it was that we spent the weekend in Clintonville for the Chicken Harvest.

O.K., I have spent the last ten minutes trying to come up with a euphemism for “kill”. I can’t. So here it is. We killed twelve chickens. Then we plucked and gutted them and prepared them for the freezer. Finally, we roasted one of those chickens for dinner last night, along with potatoes plucked from the ground, minutes before being dropped into a pot of boiling water, fresh coleslaw from garden cabbage, beans, and for dessert, oh my… homemade cherry pie, with cherries from the tart cherry tree out back. And I don’t know if it was the friends, the fowl or the black humor that made the meal so wonderful, but it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had.

At one point, Jay rode his bike over to where we had four headless chickens strung upside down, while we plucked their feathers. Fully aware that any sociopathic behavior in his future would be traced back to THIS VERY MOMENT, I tried to distract him. To my surprise, he asked if he could help. After a minute or two of pulling at the feathers and listening to the adults banter, he got distracted and wandered off. I doubt he incurred any permanent scarring.

I have now witnessed and taken part in the full cycle, from holding the fuzzy baby chicks in my hand and admiring their unquantifiable cuteness in April, to adding a little bit of salt to their tender flesh in July. It was an honor to be part of it and I am truly thankful to our friends who gave us the opportunity to be intimately in tune with our food.

Now is the time for most folks to get out and truly enjoy what is in season, wherever they are. Whatever it is you’re eating, the fresher it is, the tastier and healthier for you and the environment it will be. Enjoy local eating, eat well, and be merry.