Sacrificial Chickens

This past weekend I had the opportunity to get “up close and personal” with the “processing” of chicken. Processing, of course, is the term we use to disassociate our chicken dinner from the actual real live chicken. Formerly it was called butchering, but who wants to be all negative about the whole thing. We get our chicken from the grocery store, right? All wrapped up neat and tidy, most of the time skinless and cut into pieces and barely resembling what used to be the animal.

Don’t misunderstand…this post isn’t going to turn into some PETA nonsense about how animals are people too, and we should only eat the things that don’t feel pain. Like rocks…and I think water is still okay.  No, I’m a full-blown carnivore. So what’s the point? Simply that as part of God’s creation, we should never fail to recognize that in order for us to live, another living creature must die. It’s a harsh reality, and we’d rather not think about it, but I believe it is a healthy endeavor to – at least once – do the dirty work of hunting (or in this case, grabbing out of a pen) ones food, and experience the necessity of taking its life in order to sustain our own. Understanding where our food really comes from--the process, if you will--gives us a better respect for the animals we raise to feed ourselves. 

So, on Saturday my husband, Mark, and I drove out to the farm where we get our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) vegetables and helped butcher the chickens. There were about 32 birds. The farmers had purchased a couple metal cones, marketed as “Killing With Kindness” cones (so named because when you dump a chicken into a cone upside down, they go sort of catatonic—all limp and still, their little heads sticking out the bottom), making the dirty deed much more humane. The “men folk” did the “hunting” and the subsequent act of kindness.  Having grown up on a chicken farm, Mark was fortunately okay with that job. I, however, being the type that faints at the sight of blood, stationed myself on the plucking line so as to avoid any commotion involving 911 calls and buckets of cold water.

Plucking chickens, I discovered, is hard work! 

There were about a dozen or so stout-hearted men and women engaged in the chicken processing, including several children, one of which—an aspiring brain surgeon—wanted to know if she would be able to see a brain from one of the chickens…to which one of the hunters replied, “possibly, but first you’d have to find a chicken who had one.” It was a memorable community event. My back is still hurting from standing over a table pulling feathers for four hours. 

Now when the farmer sent out the email inviting her CSA members to participate in this annual event, I must say I hesitated. My last experience with chicken processing occurred at the tender age of five or six leaving me with a vivid memory of being chased around the yard by a headless chicken that I was certain could somehow see me. Perhaps this opportunity was a chance to face that dark memory and bring closure to my traumatic childhood episode…and I’m happy to say that I successfully avoided yet again having to deal with actually witnessing the death of a chicken.

At the end, we took home the freshest chicken I’ve ever had and stuck it directly into the oven for dinner. It was delicious! I am grateful to the chicken and to God for his provision, and to the farmer, who raised the chicken in a healthy and humane way.

It is not lost on me that the chicken, if given a choice between being my dinner and living another day, would probably run away. But then, maybe not…they are pretty stupid. In any case, knowing that while they lived, they lived the happy life of free chickens, eating grass and bugs and unmedicated, hormone-free chicken feed until the day they died, makes me feel strangely better about the whole thing.