Excerpted from Market to Mouth
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I’ve taken to calling my charges (the eleven egg-laying chickens I’m care-taking), “Girls.”

It’s surprisingly easy to feel fond of chickens. Each morning when I let the girls out of their coop into the yard (pic below), they gather about me clucking as though I’m their new best friend!

Obviously it’s food they’re after; not my friendship. But they are in fact quite comfortable in close proximity to me, so long as I don’t behave in an aggressive manner.

Tracy, whose property I’m house sitting, told me that because she eats chicken, she thought it important to have the experience of butchering one of her own.

So with the help of a friend, she did just that. I didn’t ask details; I didn’t want them. Though I do think it’s admirable that she butchered one of her own.

We’re alienated from the process of growing and butchering meat, pork and poultry for our personal consumption, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. We’d probably eat a lot less of it if we had to kill the animal or the bird ourselves.

Back in January I posted an entry for a minimal-meat meal idea and linked to Julie Powell’s new book, her follow up to the best selling, Julie and Julia.

I did so because her new book, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession, is both a challenging but eye-opening read about butchering (and other stuff, like the breakdown of her marriage).

Because I pursued further reading on the environmental and health woes of factory farming animals, I’m more conscious of the meat and poultry I buy at the grocery store now, checking it for the Animal Welfare Approved stamp or the Certified Humane stamp.

However, in all honesty, I’m still not having any luck finding chicken labeled with either of those stamps.

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