TIBDIOB #1: I Killed the Chicken

This is part 1 of a potential series: TIBDIOB, or Things I've Been Doing Instead of Blogging. I'm going somewhat chronologically here. Today's topic actually occurred two weeks before Thanksgiving.

So, I've talked before about my proposed Beautiful Life. For those of you not following along at home, my Beautiful Life would consist of a homestead farm filled with various farm animals, particularly sheep and other fiber animals, but also chickens. The husband and I feel perfectly capable of taking care of laying chickens. Chickens, in general, are far less demanding than dogs, and Beckett seems to be doing okay. We were less sure of our ability to raise meat chickens. After all, Beckett is basically our son, and we wouldn't even think of eating him. Besides, as of yet, we have not found any recipes for Fox Terrier au Vin.

But we are meat-eaters, and we both feel very strongly about our decision to be conscientious carnivores. We only eat meat raised by farmers we know and trust, which basically means that outside of our home, we are functionally vegetarians. We have thought a lot about whether we would eventually be able to go to the next level and raise (and thus, kill) our own meat once we reach our Beautiful Life. So when our local co-op offered a chicken processing class at a member's house, we were pathetically - some might say bizarrely - excited.

The class was about the whole process of raising meat chickens. In September, we met the chicks. In October, we met the chickens. And then, in November, we killed them. I won't go into the details of the whole process. I will say that as I watched our instructor do the first bird, I wasn't completely sure I'd be able to do any of it. The whole thing was set up in his yard. In Illinois at least, if you live in a town where you can raise certain livestock within town limits, you can also butcher the animals, as long as you aren't selling them or doing enough to qualify as an agricultural enterprise. (That's an oversimplification of the rules, so don't go processing any chickens without checking your local ordinances, okay?) He had it set up as a four-step process, with a station for each step, and of course, with step 1 being the drawing of the knife. I ended up doing every step at least once, with varying degrees of success.

It wasn't what I'd call a fun time. It was hard, emotionally and physically. But I felt that if I couldn't handle it, I was going to have to reconsider my stance as a meat-eater. Eating other creatures means enacting violence against them, indirectly at least. When we were buying our meat shrink-wrapped in the grocery store, we didn't think about that too much. I'm not going to go into the politics or ethics or morals behind the decisions that the husband and I have made about food. I'll just say that whether or not we end up raising our own meat birds, we do know now that we would be capable of doing so.

I'm going to close with a warning. Kids, be careful what you read. If you had told me when I picked up Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma or Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle that I'd end up holding a freshly killed chicken by the feet, I'd have told you that you were crazy. Don't even try to tell me that books can't change lives. The husband and I have chicken blood on our hands (metaphorically, at this point), and little but books to blame.