Processing Day

It's Sunday afternoon and we're doing farm things together as a family. Over the past year or so, we've grown our chicken flock from 6 to approximately 50 chickens. For the most part this has worked out really well. We get our own farm fresh eggs from free range chickens. The eggs are much better than anything you can get from the store. And as you can probably imagine with 50 chickens, we have a surplus of eggs so we give them to friends and neighbors. It gives us a good excuse to stop by and see some of the older folks who don't get out that often.

I said it's worked out really well "for the most part". We have a few too many rosters running around fighting with each other and harassing their women. So, yesterday we decided that it was time to allow some of the roosters to contribute to the farm in another way.

It's much easier to catch chickens when they've gone to their roost for the evening than trying to chase them around the farm during the daylight hours. It's also far less embarrassing as Benjamin and I found that out the hard way when we chased down 3 ugly ducks to take to the lake.

Anyway, last night after Percy (the big man on campus) put them to bed, Laura and I went out and put 3 of the younger roosters and a hen called Hook in a re-purposed dog crate for the evening. Hook got her name because her lower and upper beaks didn't meet properly. This deformity didn't seem to hamper her eating, but it did give her a pretty foul disposition.

The other reason for putting them in a cage the night before is that it's better to keep the chickens from eating for 24 hours or so prior to...their contribution.

This afternoon we went out to finish the task. Three will go in the freezer while the fourth will be on the table tonight. Benjamin and Rachel have gotten use to the idea that animals were placed on this earth for us to take of and to provide food for us. In fact, Benjamin was eager to see the heart and actually wanted to know why we couldn't keep the feet. We've had our own chickens before and they've eaten some venison that I harvested this winter.

We definitely feel very blessed to live here on this plot of land that God has entrusted to us during our time on this earth. We really enjoy life in the country and getting back to the basics. It's started to rain now so I think I'll spend the rest of the afternoon in a rocking chair on the porch.