Two weekends ago we spent a good portion of Saturday morning at the Zakarison farm north of Pullman, processing chickens for the freezer. Eric - that's him in the photo with his hand inside a bird - raises them on pasture, with movable chicken "trucks," a la Joel Salatin (Pastured Poultry Profits, is the name of his book, I think), so they were fat and happy and healthy birds. Also, Eric has an excellent setup for the processing day, which is outdoors, painless for the birds, hygienic, and considering the task, with as little yuck-factor as possible. This was the third time we've killed and processed our own chickens with Eric's help and Walt and I have found it to be a satisfying day of work. At the end of the day, with 20 chickens in the freezer, we feel like we've accomplished quite a lot!
This chicken tastes fabulous, by the way. I had to learn how to cut apart a whole chicken - not a skill one picks up automatically these days - but once I learned that, it was pretty easy to never buy industrial/factory raised chicken again. Eric's chickens are indeed more expensive, but we don't need to eat chicken every day, do we?
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