For several weeks now i have been hearing the scream of a chicken in the night, whereupon i climb down the loft and rush outside, holding aloft a dim little lantern like the Statue of Liberty to where the dogs are already silently loping through the darkness. Nothing has been discovered until morning, and only…
Tag: Pastured Poultry
Chicken, Chickpea, and Spinach Stew
The past two days have brought us grey skies and pouring, drizzling, sprinkling, thundering rain. Rain making a puddle out of the patio, pooling in old buckets, pattering and rattling on the roofs, and pinging like chimes on the pile of junk under the eves of the barn. Last night between rains the sky flashed…
A Sacred Thing
We just finished our main season for harvesting animals, and someone asked me recently if it makes me sad to kill them. Most people, even meat eaters, can hardly imagine killing an animal themselves. After many years of growing both the meat and the vegetable part of our food, I have come to realize that…
Thrifty Leftover Turkey Pie With Garden Vegetables
Cold weather and busy days. There’s so much I’d like to get done before the new year, but the short days run by so quickly, and I’m left wondering to myself how it’s so easy to stay up so late knitting by the fire when the nights are so long. There are lettuce and collard…
All-Raw Eggnog
There was a raccoon raid on the chicken coop last night. We had seen the scoundrel lurking around the barn earlier in the evening, and in retrospect we should have dispatched him then. But everyone was tired and chilled, and Ethan felt really ill. Much later, long after the restless teenager had ceased to flick…
The Little Red Hen
My children got attached to one of the red Freedom Ranger hens from the last batch of meat birds. I’m not sure how it happened, because those chickens all looked almost exactly alike, and they were kept way out in the pasture where no one ever played with them. However it was, at harvest time…
Fried Chicken (and a little romance)
This is not a new recipe, but one I’ve made for a long time. I first came up with it after I began to eat meat again after several years of being strict vegetarian, and then vegan. My years of plant-based diet had started to cause some health problems for me, and I felt…
Pig/Chicken Symbiosis
For years we couldn’t have our egg chickens be truly free-ranging because of predator problems, and (the biggest problem) our “livestock guardian dog” loved eating chickens. We tried having a special light-sensitive door that opened and closed automatically, and poultry netting, plastic owls, etc, but it never solved the walking-chicken-dinner problem. This year, we’ve been…
Graduating the Chickies
The pastured meat chickens have been a lot to keep up with so far. They grew faster than we thought they would (doesn’t this always happen?) and it was a wee bit of a struggle to keep up with them. They are so incy-wincy-teeny-tiny when they arrive, you can’t imagine they will be so large…
Herb-Roasted Chicken
We have had lots of beautiful, fresh herbs in the garden lately, but of course you can make this recipe with dried herbs as well. It turned out beautifully browned with crispy skin and a fragrant, herby flavor. Herb-roasted Chicken 1 sprig of fresh thyme (or 1/2 teaspoon dried) 1 sprig fresh dill…
FRICASSEÉ DE POULET: Chicken Fricassee
This chicken recipe wasn’t too involved…if you don’t mind quartering a chicken, and taking several steps during the cooking. So yeah, it wasn’t the easiest recipe by any means….but it was really, really good. The flavors were just excellent, and you have a chicken frame to put into broth afterwards, so it’s a budget-stretcher as…
Chicks!
Our first spring chicks arrived safely last week in a scuttling, peeping cardboard box! The morning Ethan went to pick them up at the post office, the lady who has a strange phobia about handling birds was unfortunately working the desk. Somehow she’s always the one that ends up handing over the baby chicks. …
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 