Harvest Day

There has been a lot going on around the homestead lately, one of the biggest things being the harvesting of our flock of meat chickens a couple weeks ago. When we began this project, we invited anyone who was interested to put in an order and to join us, when the time came, for the processing. Our plan was to take a Saturday to harvest the birds and then celebrate with a harvest dinner at the end.

The road to harvest day was a pretty rough one and we arrived at the appointed day with 12 birds left (three had been processed throughout the week). Four of the six families/individuals who had requested birds were able to participate, either helping to process or helping in the kitchen to prepare the meal. All told, things went very smoothly. It may seem a strange thing to say given what we were doing, but it was a truly good day. We had a house and yard full of people who wanted to work together to provide food for themselves and others. Even though the reason we were all there was the death of 12 chickens, it was a day full of life: kids running around (inside, for the little ones...), grown ups working together to prepare a meal, or to process chickens to be saved up for the winter. It was chaotic and rather stressful at times, but it was real, satisfying and joyful.

We have been on a journey that started, perhaps, ten years ago with our college trip to Honduras, of becoming aware of where our food comes from. In recent years it has grown increasingly important to us to not only have a better understanding of where and how our food is produced* and to purchase foods with that in mind, but also to actually produce a portion of that food ourselves. That's easy with vegetables (well... sometimes more than others), but it was important to us, since we eat meat, to experience raising and processing our own meat as well. That experience would give us the chance to do a few things: 1. raise the chickens the way we think they deserve to be raised, with good, anti-biotic- and hormone-free food, as much room to move around as they would like, and a chance to live outside in nature rather than in an enclosed environment, 2. be present and involved in the entire process from beginning to end - both the good and the difficult parts - to have first hand experience of what it means to eat chicken, and 3. to be able to provide some friends and family with good, well-raised meat and to have the opportunity to share in the harvest with many of them.

It was definitely a learning experience for us, and we're coming away from it not just with a freezer-full of chicken, but with greater knowledge going forward. We made some mistakes, and next time will opt for a different breed of chicken (the breed we raised this time was the same as the commercial operations raise, and though they had a life exponentially better than those in commercial operations do, we still ended up feeling sad for them due to their breeding which favors greatest meat production in the shortest amount of time irregardless of body structure), but we also found affirmation in the satisfaction we feel at having been able to raise and process our own meat and in the sense of community that we had the chance to experience on harvest day which was a rich reward for all the hard and sometimes difficult work.

*If you are interested in learning more about where and how your food is produced, some of the best resources that I've found are the following: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and the film Food, Inc.