Last blog post...

And Another Good-bye

by Sharon Gaughan, PCLF Education Program Director

This will be my final post on this hen blog.

During the years that I have worked at the Prairie Crossing Learning Farm, I have always been fascinated by and involved with the Learning Farm chickens.  In fall 2012, due to an opening up of my work responsibilities and schedule, I was able to take on the management and care of our chicken flock – including the exciting task of starting a new flock from day-old chicks this summer.  

Also last fall, I took over the writing for this hen blog.  If you have been following this blog, you have traveled this chicken journey with me.
 

Unfortunately for me, the care of the Learning Farm chickens – and, I’m guessing, the writing for this hen blog – will soon be taken over by others.  The education program director position which I currently hold is being phased out, and I will no longer be working at the Learning Farm after this week.  As you might imagine, this is a sad time for me.

While growing up in Chicago, I had a strong childhood dream to live on a farm.  I watched the then-popular T.V. series “Lassie” with deep envy.  I so wanted to be Timmy, living on a farm with a farm dog of my very own. Fast forward many years later, and I still do not live on a farm, nor do I have a farm dog – but for a while I was able to make my livelihood on this farm (and, well, I do have a cat that nine years ago was born on this farm!).

My childhood dream was not quite fulfilled, but I was closer than I had been – and I poured myself into this job, heart and soul.  I learned so much while working here – about farming, about farm animals (particularly chickens), and about myself.  I will always be grateful for the opportunity to explore my inner farmer.

I have had the good fortune to have worked for many fascinating people and wonderful organizations in my life.  I am thankful for that.  I am hopeful that I will continue to be as fortunate, as I explore what’s next for me – both professionally and personally.

I've always enjoyed writing, and have truly enjoyed this first experience writing for a blog.  For this reason, I’m considering starting my own blog in early 2014.  This new blog won’t focus entirely on chickens, but backyard chickens are likely to figure prominently (especially since the Lake County board recently passed an ordinance allowing backyard chickens on ¼ acre lots in unincorporated Lake County –  at last it's legal for me to have my own backyard chickens!).

In addition to chickens though, I expect I might dabble in a wide spectrum of suburban homesteading and health-conscious topics – growing, preserving, and cooking with veggies, fruits, and herbs; making certain foods from scratch (granola, yogurt, cheese – and maybe chicken soup!); crafting of various types; and physical fitness (with a particular focus on yoga).  If a blog of that type might be of interest to you, please feel free to contact me at my personal email address (smgaughan@att.net) and I will be sure to let you know when it’s up and running.

Until then, I wish for you the happiest of holidays – and lives filled with peace and joy, and dreams fulfilled.

 

Cooking Chicken Soup

Chicken Soup for the Soul

by Sharon Gaughan, PCLF Education Program Director

I’m not a strict vegetarian, but I don’t eat much meat – and I almost never cook meat at home.  Today, however, I chose to embark on a different (for me) culinary path.  Today I made my first ever homemade chicken soup from scratch – and I made it with one of the very chickens from our adult flock that we slaughtered earlier this week. 

This is the ultimate in knowing where your food comes from.

Because these hens are much older and tougher than the chickens one would purchase in a grocery store, they are considered “stew hens” – to be cooked slowly in the stew (or soup) pot.  So, chicken soup was my goal today – chicken soup for the body, and for the soul...

I found the chicken-soup-making process to be a long and somewhat messy one.  And when it was all over, I decided that while the resulting soup was certainly tasty – it was not as tasty, I thought, as many of the vegetarian soups that I typically make. 

I’m very glad that I made this soup today – it was something worth experiencing on many levels.  I have two more chicken carcasses from this week’s slaughter in my freezer, so I will definitely be making chicken soup again (well, actually, I have four more chicken carcasses in my freezer – but two are destined for my mom’s soup pot). 

But after those are gone, I think I’m likely to stick with making my various veggie soups, and leave the chicken soups for other chefs to make and enjoy…

Saying Good-bye to Our Adult Flock

Good-bye Sweet Hens...
posted by Sharon Gaughan, PCLF Education Program Director

This week, a number of us -- both Learning Farm staff, as well as some of the students from the Montessori Adolescent Program -- participated in the pre-winter slaughter of the Learning Farm's adult chicken flock. These were the Bovans Brown chickens that we purchased as adults last fall from Sandhill Family Farms, so these hens have been with us for just one short year.  

Because Bovans Browns are a hybrid, bred to produce a lot of eggs, we started seeing some reproductive issues during the past few months as these hens approached their second year. For that reason, we decided not to offer these birds for adoption as we have in the past, but to slaughter the entire flock instead.  

This is the third chicken slaughter that I have participated in at the Learning Farm -- and I have participated with mixed feelings every time.  It is not an easy thing for me.  I don't think it is for any of us.

What follows is a reflection that was written several years ago prior to an earlier Learning Farm chicken slaughter.  It was written by Eric Carlberg, the Learning Farm manager, and the farm educator for these Montessori students.


Chicken Slaughter Reflection
by Eric Carlberg

For me, it’s not easy to kill the hens I’ve cared for over the last two years.  It’s not easy to write about either.  During the last couple of days, as I’ve begun to gather the necessary supplies to organize a processing station, gathering and organizing my thoughts into a clear message has proven more difficult.  But I believe it is every bit as important.

One hundred years ago, the majority of Americans still lived on farms.  Most 12-14 year olds – the age of the students who will help with our slaughter – would have seen and probably helped with the killing of farm animals.  They would have known these animals well, feeding, observing, and carting off their manure on a regular basis.  This intimacy with the life and death of animals would have conveyed what I find to be an uncomfortable truth: animals die so that we can continue living. 
         

Today our relationships with animals are full of contradictions.  We spend tremendous resources protecting their habitat.  We spend hours marveling at them and sometimes petting them in zoos.  We invite them into our homes to become part of our family.  We watch movies and travel to theme parks portraying animals that think, speak and sing not like actual chickens, mice and hyenas, but like human beings.  As a culture we are anthropomorphizing animals to an unprecedented degree, and yet, we are eating more animals than ever.  And we usually place those animals in living conditions exponentially worse than when most of us raised and killed them ourselves.

In many ways the Learning Farm exists to illuminate these contradictions.  We strive to shrink the tremendous gap between the food on our plate and the sacrifice, by animals and humans, needed to get it there.  Slaughtering our chickens every two years provides one of our best learning opportunities.

The adolescents that will help end the hens’ lives know the animals.  They have fed them regularly, receiving the chorus of coos hens make when food arrives.  They have washed, packaged, cooked and eaten their delicious eggs.  They have helped me move their fences and wagon around the farm so that the hens’ manure will nourish next year’s crops.  They have protected the chickens from predators.  And alongside us, they have analyzed the shrinking egg production graphs and feed costs and concluded, as farmers do, that at this point in their lives the hens are placing an unsustainable financial strain on the farm. 

They will feel as sad about this as I do.  And on the day of the slaughter, because they know the chickens, because they appreciate all the hens have done for us, they will help me give the chickens the most humane death we can.  It won’t be easy.  And it shouldn’t be.

Chicken Poetry

Sharing a Chicken Poem

posted by Sharon Gaughan,
PCLF Education Program Director

This poem was included in “New Yorker” magazine several years ago, but I just came across it again recently when cleaning out some files.  I thought that I would share it here. 

 

Those of you that know chickens will be able to relate well to these words, I’m sure...

 

 

A Glossary Of Chickens

by Gary Whitehead

There should be a word for the way

they look with just one eye, neck bent,

for beetle or worm or strewn grain.

“Gleaning,” maybe, between “gizzard”

and “grit.” And for the way they run

toward someone they trust, their skirts

hiked, their plump bodies wobbling:

“bobbling,” let’s call it, inserted

after “blowout” and before “bloom.”

There should be terms, too, for things

they do not do—like urinate or chew—

but perhaps there already are.

I’d want a word for the way they drink,

head thrown back, throat wriggling,

like an old woman swallowing

a pill; a word beginning with “S,”

coming after “sex feather” and before “shank.”

And one for the sweetness of hens

but not roosters. We think

that by naming we can understand,

as if the tongue were more than muscle.

Chicken Treats!

Trick or Treat for Chickens!

by Sharon Gaughan, PCLF Education Program Director

Our chickens love treats, and we love to treat them well!

Both our adult flock and backyard flock are given greens on a regularly.  In addition to what they glean from the pasture, we toss a variety of greens and other veggie scraps to them on a regular basis.  We also make “chicken gruel” for the adult flock from time to time. 

You may recall from previous blog posts that chicken gruel is the powdery remains from their chicken feed that we then mix with water to make a gruel-like consistency.  Despite the fact that the chickens weren’t the least bit interested in eating the powder, they gobble up the gruel with enthusiasm.

Our young pullets are given organic greens and chicken gruel (or perhaps I should call it “pullet gruel”) on a daily basis.  They’re also given organic chicken scratch (aka “chicken candy”) occasionally, and live mealworms about once a week. 

Mealworms, you ask?  Mealworms are the larval form of the mealworm beetle, Tenebrio molitor, a type of darkling beetle -- and chickens love them!

Some may consider the feeding of live mealworms to be a bit ghoulish – but that’s what makes this an especially appropriate post-Halloween blog post!

We've been raising the mealworms ourselves, in a 10-gallon aquarium in the office that Anya and I currently share.  Our pullets get excited no matter what the treat – but nothing compares to the feeding frenzy that occurs when mealworms are offered.

Here’s a short video that shows a bit of that feeding frenzied excitement -- and the relative calm that follows, once there are no more mealworms to be had.

Enjoy!