Chicken Quandry

The blazing hot late summer and early autumn have passed now and yet we find that our backyard flock of hens has not returned from their several week egg-laying hiatus. Then there was the blow of Isabella's death, reducing our flock to five currently unproductive feathered ladies. It has left us with a bit of a quandry. We would like to replace Isabella and perhaps add a couple more new hens to the flock to ensure continued egg supply in the future. However, we have two large hens. Aggressive and domineering. There is no chance that a young hen would survive the requisite pecking order battle that would ensue when introduced to the coop.

So, we have decided that it is prudent to eliminate Feather Cloud and Bianca, the offending standard breed hens, from the flock in order to introduce three new hens to our backyard Chalet Poulet. The options are to butcher the girls and enjoy them for dinner or to pawn them off on a kind friend who operates a small chicken farm in exchange for a couple of new bantam hens. I am, it seems, the only member of the family who views the former option worthy of consideration. The Professor is a bit squeamish about such things and the children too attached to their little hens with names.

It seems a small matter, I suppose, and why upset the children by making them eat their "pets" some might argue. Just buy an organic chicken at the store and be glad Feather Cloud and Bianca have a nice farm to go live out their remaining years. However, choosing this more polite path diverts us from a real opportunity. Yes, the children have learned to appreciate the function of these little creatures: they provide us with life sustaining food, as well as immeasurable entertainment value. It is infinetely important, though, that at some time they have the chance to experience the full wealth of an animal...its meat.

Wendell Berry writes in his piece, The Pleasures of Eating, that eating is an "agricultural act." He writes with his usual insightfulness:

Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They
think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of
themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as
"consumers." If they think beyond that, they recognize that they are passive
consumers. They buy what they want-or what they have been persuaded to
want-within the limits of wifery of the old household food economy. But one
can be thus liberated only by entering a trap (unless one sees ignorance and
helplessness as the signs of privilege, as many people apparently do). The
trap is the ideal of industrialism: a walled city surrounded by valves that
let merchandise in but no consciousness out. How does one escape this trap?
Only voluntarily, the same way that one went in: by restoring one's
consciousness of what is involved in eating; by reclaiming responsibility for one's own part in the food economy.

You see, I don't want my children to grow as passive consumers who stop eating the healthy meats God provides to us because they feel sorry for the poor little hen or the handsome Longhorn. True, they know, from conversation and books, that animals are slaughtered to feed their growing bodies. They know that their art teacher's pig, Wilbur, became a great supply of pork chops, bacon and ham for the family. But, here we have the opportunity to literally take part in the agricultural process-"to restore our consciousness of what is involved in eating." To literally earn and own our dinner.

Later, Mr. Berry writes, most poetically:

The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere
gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and
know that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants,
perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such
a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating.
The knowledge of the good health of the garden relieves and frees and comforts
the eater. The same goes for eating meat. The thought of the good pasture and of
the calf contentedly grazing flavors the steak. Some. I know, will think it
bloodthirsty or worse to eat a fellow creature you have known all its life. On
the contrary, I think it means that you eat with understanding and with
gratitude. A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate
consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes. The pleasure of
eating, then, may be the best available standard of our health. And this
pleasure, I think, is pretty fully available to the urban consumer who will make
the necessary effort.

What shall be the fate of Feather Cloud and Bianca? And what shall be the fate of the convenience-hungry, squeamish consumer? It all remains to be seen.


Commercial Chicken Barn















Commercial Free Range Chickens