On our never ending list of things to purchase to make our lives.. easier? More efficient? (I mean, IS it ever really??) Is a chicken feather plucker. We also need to build a chick-shaw, like this one that Justin Rhodes built. But for now, we’ve been lucky enough to have a local friend who took care of our twenty birds and fattened them up for us. There is no peace of mind like that which comes from raising your own meat. I had a person ask me once if my farm fresh eggs tasted better than store bought. They’re kind of missing the point. Yes, a lot of times there is a remarkable difference in the flavor of home grown vs. store bought, but let’s face it, sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes it’s all about peace of mind than anything else. I KNOW what these chickens ate. I KNOW they weren’t injected with anything. I KNOW they had fresh air and green grass to eat – and yes, bugs, too GASP! (Ya’ll. Seriously. If you’re buying chicken labeled ‘vegetarian’, then I’d put that at the top of the list of what’s wrong with our chickens).
I also know how they were butchered, because my husband and I did it ourselves. It was done humanely. Not shoved into a crate, carried with a thousand others, to a facility that smells so bad the employees can’t even go into a restaurant to eat (ask me how I know), for them to panic and have to undergo special processing because it’s such a traumatic experience.
And yes. The taste is absolutely amazing. I love this life.
