a humble luxury

Before we moved to the farm we had eight chickens. At the farm I tended these girls plus another 40+ birds, a mix of meat birds and layers, plus some random chicks and pullets. The chickens were my favorite animals on the farm, but I didn't get to see as much of my girls as I would have liked. I missed them even more after we moved from the farm. I didn't think we'd bring them here for a while – maybe never – because of predators, and the effort required to socialize Tuna, and because we are completely broke after this move and can't afford to build a coop from scratch.

But then we talked to some friends who live out in the boondocks, like we do, with a similar risk of predation, and they assured us that with the heavy scent of Canid around their birds have been quite safe. At the same time, we realized that we had a ready-made coop frame under the back deck – tall enough to stand under, and relatively free of drafts. Two coils of chicken wire later, we had a coop waiting for our girls. I improvised a feeder with one of our composting buckets.

Now begins the job of socializing Tuna. This was not going so well before we left the farm. I couldn't find much information about it so we were just winging it, which resulted in one pullet losing part of her tail and another almost losing a wing. Not good. The birds will need to be isolated in the coop for three days before free-ranging, and then the real work will begin. Advice is sorely needed, if you have any experience in this area!

(Belly full of 1.5 pounds of raw beef is okay. Belly full of chicken? Not so much.)

Now that we don't have a chest freezer and only limited refrigeration we are struggling with the high cost of high-quality meat, specifically that we can't buy in bulk anymore, nor can we store the boxes of free soup bones and treats for Tuna that we used to get from a butcher friend. My inclination is to simply eat more vegetarian meals, beans being a thousand times cheaper than grass-fed beef, but my blood sugar isn't too happy about that, or my menstrual cycle or my energy levels or my partner, who grumps at me about beans and rice, knowing as he does that we'll be snacking later in the evening.

Our plan to remedy this situation is to raise meat birds, heritage breeds who do well in free-range conditions without the health problems of the industrialized Cornish X. Jeremy's idea is to raise 40-50 birds (the coop is big enough, and could be expanded, and there's limitless range as well), butchering two per week starting at 20 weeks. Two birds a week will provide enough meat for several meals, plus broth, without needing a freezer.

As a WAPF Chapter Leader I get emails every week asking about good, local sources for meat. I can suggest Lovers Lane or pork, John Ford for beef, and Owen for lamb or goat, but I cannot recommend a source for chicken or other poultry. We have one chicken CSA here, but the cost averages out to $18 per bird, far out of reach for people who usually consider chicken an economical meat. Our co-op sells “free-range” chicken from Petaluma, where they admit right there on their website that the birds get only one square foot of space. And then there's the “organic” chicken at the grocery store. I don't even need to talk about that, right?

When people really press me for a good chicken source, specifically asking where I buy it (since nobody just doesn't eat chicken, right?), I'm fairly transparent about what I do. There are enough people raising backyard hens around here, who can't have or don't want a rooster within city limits. Every day at least one person posts to Freecycle, Craigslist, or the community bulletin board: “One of my pullets turned out to be a boy, please take him.” Or else the rooster is aggressive, or there are too many boys, or he's just old. We bring home that boy, fast him for 24 hours, and then butcher him. You can't get more affordable than free, or more local than meeting in a parking lot, or more happy than a backyard family chicken. 

Most people are not willing to do this work, but with the pitiful dearth of truly local, truly free-range, truly affordable chicken meat, if you want to eat chicken you might seriously consider developing this skill. There is no commercial substitute, especially if you are low-income.

Around here, many pastured meats are only slightly more expensive than conventional CAFO/feedlot meat from the grocery store. Chicken is the exception to this rule; chicken is never available at the farmers market or from mixed-use farms (except the aforementioned chicken CSA through Mendocino Organics), and when I ask why the farmers tell me that it's simply not possible to sell free-range chickens inexpensively enough to appease their customers.

How can this be? I wondered. Chicken is easily the cheapest meat in any grocery store. In many ways the Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast is our national cut – available everywhere, extremely fast and easy to prepare, and with a shiny (albeit entirely false) veneer of healthfulness to boot.

But if you study history you'll learn quickly that this perception of chicken meat as inexpensive and widely accessible is very recent, and due entirely to the most unsavory aspects of industrial agriculture. For most of our history chicken was a sort of luxury meat, acquired from hens who no longer laid eggs, or from competing roosters; there was no commercialized chicken production, only home-based butchering. The invention of the CAFO – followed up by the engineering of the Cornish X chicken, genetically tinkered to transform feed into meat at a truly freakish rate – allowed manufacturers to produce chickens that sold almost cheaper than their feed cost.

The consequences of industrializing chickens, though, are legion. After working with a random flock of Cornish X chickens (not by choice), I can attest to their overall lack of hardiness. They possess virtually no survival skills and suffer about ten-thousand potentially fatal health problems before reaching slaughter weight at the ripe old age of ten weeks old. The very fact of their existence makes it impossible to raise them humanely. I observed firsthand their laziness, their insatiable appetites, their propensity for wheezing in 80-degree weather, their lack of effort at evading predators, and the wounds suffered from muscle growing too fast for skin and bone.

Animals bred for factory farming simply do not translate to small-scale farm life. They represent a serious breach in the evolution of domestication.

CAFOs brimming with Cornish X chickens make for a very cheap protein source, and it's hard to argue with the efficiency or accessibility, especially for those living in poverty. But this system has also made it impractical to raise chickens for small-scale production. No heritage chicken, or even a standard hybrid cross, can compete with the Cornish X in terms of feed/meat ratios. And no “organic,” “free-range” commercial chicken can realistically be called “humanely raised.” So that leaves few choices for someone who eats consciously: you can spend a whole lot of money on a CSA (rarely available), or you can hold your nose while buying greenwashed chicken from the grocery store (Cornish X raised in a warehouse), or you can seek out unwanted roosters (necessitating skills most people don't care to possess), or you can raise your own (definitely not an option for most people). Or you can stop eating chicken, and eat more vegetarian meals, and put your savings into better meat sources.

Always conscious of the plight of wage slaves, I hesitate to celebrate any system that makes food more expensive. I understand, intimately, both sides of the argument – the one being that the real cost of cheap food is simply externalized, and savings on health care, corporate welfare, and ecological degradation more than balance the immediate higher cost of real food – the other being that poor people can't necessarily consider such a balance sheet while being unsure of their next meal, or while shopping with food stamps from gas stations or Walmart, or with physical, familial, or health restrictions. As someone who has lived below the poverty line all my adult life, and yet feels keenly the desperate need for a return to localized food production, both of these arguments weigh in my mind with equal fervor.

(Well, maybe a little less than equal: Michael Pollan's privileged treatise in favor of $8/dozen eggs pissed me off good.)

After every article about food deserts come the requisite string of comments about how lazy and stupid those people are, why don't they just grow a garden? Not long ago I read one such article about a food desert in L.A. that pictured an older lady standing in front of some grass, followed by comments about how if she were not so lazy and dependent on the nanny state she'd grow a garden right there, which is so presumptuous it makes me want to scream.

Garden space is at a premium in urban areas. Assuming the space is available, and not contaminated, and gets enough sun, and has a water source, you need permission to tear out whatever is there, and then to store supplies and develop compost and grow things that might not look as nice as the freshly manicured wasteland of a lawn. In my experience very few homeowners or landlords are willing to let this happen.

You also need the ability to bring in materials for a garden. Have you ever tried to haul 50-pound bags of manure or compost on the bus? or walking home? And last I checked, gardening ain't free. Rarely does one even break even on what is spent on soil, tools, seeds or transplants, water, and other expenses. 

Ultimately, vegetables aren't going to provide the bulk of calories for most people. Far more important are protein and fat sources, and in this age of "development" it's difficult to have the space, money, or permission to raise animals. It's even less likely that a person living in a food desert will be permitted to raise chickens.

All this being said, I do believe that chicken meat represents an exception to most arguments on local food vs. poverty. As industrial agriculture collapses, the only chicken that will exist is what we raise ourselves or salvage or barter from others. The CAFO system and the sustaining of the Cornish X are not possible on a small scale. In some ways, chicken will regain its status as a luxury meat, enjoyed only occasionally, as a byproduct of layer birds. But by developing butchering skills, low-income families can already enjoy the highest-quality chicken meat available, virtually free.

For my family, raising chickens for meat is a good compromise. The cost is spread out over many weeks instead of due up front, as with a CSA, and we're privileged to have limitless space for free-ranging. It's not free, but it is a fairly low-cost protein source, and we won't find a better quality of meat. Not to mention that it's just plain fun to have chickens around. I have missed them.