School's Out!

The final bell has rung and the halls have emptied!  Summer is actually here…at least for those of us in school. I started full-time teaching in March and since then I've made some great strides and really enjoyed the classroom time with my seventh and eighth grade students.  Before the garden begins to explode with produce, canning season hits high gear, and the temperatures soar, I’m going to take a short break.  Don’t worry, when I return to the blogosphere I’ll be full swing in uninterrupted homestead life for the next few months -- I can’t wait!

How To Process A Chicken

About eight weeks ago I posted about our newly-arrived flock of one hundred chicks.  True to my word, this post follows up with their story.  In an era where most of the population is disassociated from their food sources, it can be a difficult fact to face that an animal dies in order to be a part of our diet.  On our homestead this is a revered truth, a part of the circle of life.  Processing your own meat isn’t for everyone, but there are a growing number of people intrigued by skillsets of yesteryear such as this one.  Like my husband and me, these folks are eager to be more self-sufficient and crave a means to be in touch with nature and their food.   Raising food at home is also an excellent way to live frugally while eating extraordinarily well.  Chickens are small animals that are relatively easy to raise and fairly quick to mature; this makes them a good starting place for those interested in learning how to process their own meat.  Below is a how-to with plenty of photographs from our most recent chicken-processing experience.  Please note that while we borrowed specialized equipment for this large batch, it is just as simple to do it the old way when working with smaller batches of birds (hot water in a pot for scalding and hand-plucking the feathers).  To everything there is a season and on our farm this year the season for meat chickens has come to a close.  

Please Note: Due to the How-To nature of the topic, this post contains somewhat graphic images of the transition from a live chicken to a kitchen-ready carcass.  This is not meant to shock readers, but rather to educate those interested in the step-by-step process of a truly local, farm-raised, homestead kitchen staple.  

Love & Marriage

Weldon and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary last week!  I know I’m deviating a bit from my usual

kitchen, homestead, and farm topics, but as I see it, all things in this life are interconnected.  Weldon and I are the core of this homestead and as such our marriage plays a vital role in how our homestead, kitchen, and farm exist.  Some readers may think this topic too personal or maybe a bit presumptuous for such a newly-married person.  I have no disclaimer there, but perhaps you’ll get a good chuckle from this week’s story and can appreciate a dose of young love. 

Me and My Roasted Chicken

You might think that running a farm business to raise pastured protein would solidify my access to every sort of meaty delight.  Like a kid in a candy shop I could feast to my heart’s content on whatever came to mind!  This is a half truth.  Okay, maybe a two-thirds truth.  The whole truth is that, up until last year when we closed our retail business, I had access to a lot of whole chickens which in my mind meant the breast was usually dry, leg quarters were rarely cooked right, and in general, the dish was ho-hum unless it had some awesome saucy concoction to distract me.  Ugh, who wanted to fuss with all that!  This post chronicles how I fell back in love with chicken when -- on a wonderful, life-changing day -- our foodie friend Chris in Nashville gave us a marvelous how-to for roasting a whole bird.  Since then, the days of blah chicken have been abolished thanks to this reliable recipe that’s become one of our family favorites!  Best-Ever, Super-Easy, Skillet-Roasted Chicken