Where Does Your Food Come From?--Chicken

Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 7 June 2023…

Hey Y’all!

Good evening and happy Wednesday from Air2Ground Farms! It was downright hot today as the temps brushed 90 and still dry. I’m having flashbacks to last summer’s drought and praying for the rain that is at a 70% chance tomorrow. The animals are good today. Most all of them take an afternoon siesta to get away from the heat. The last pic is the pigs…look at those curled tails! That is a sure sign they are very happy. The two pics of the sheep are to show the ewes finally shedding their winter coat and the lambs getting big. The beef chickens went through almost 5 gallons of water today and didn’t eat as much as normal in the heat. The big event of the day is captured in the top 3 pics in the gallery. I heard a noise this morning as I walked through the barn and looked up to see a HUGE raccoon climbing our new shelves and scurrying over the wall into the soffit. Since the barn doesn’t have spray-foam insulation, the walls are open to the soffit. The raccoon was using it as a highway to walk back and forth in the barn! It paused long enough to look out at me a few times. I sent Shelley some pics and she personified it as taunting me. I decided that shooting it inside the barn wasn’t a great idea and Shelley recommended getting the trap and putting it on the top shelf. I asked ChatGPT for the best bait to trap a raccoon. It recommended marshmallows first but we don’t have any so I went with the second recommendation, peanut butter on a slice of bread. I set the trap on the top shelf and within a couple of hours I had the raccoon! I relocated it far enough away that it won’t be back. I’m wondering if Tozer being out forced it out of the barn wood and into the soffit. Anyway, raccoon crisis is over! I made a batch of cheese in-between my raccoon escapades but didn’t get any work done on the truck—hopefully tomorrow.

I woke up this morning with the thought in my nugget of the top graphic. I kept thinking “Where does your food come from?” I pictured chickens in a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) and then pictured one of the most recent pictures I took of the beef chickens. I tried to capture what I was seeing in that top graphic. I am by NO means an animal rights activist. That said, I do believe that we can ensure an animal has its best life until its one bad day. Chickens like to scratch through the grass and find things to eat. They chase bugs and worms and eat grass and flowers. They lounge in the sunshine when it’s cool and hang out in the shade when its hot. They take dust baths to clean their feathers. Looking at the picture of the chicken CAFO, that’s about the farthest thing from a chicken’s natural habitat I can think of. It’s no wonder that grocery store chicken tastes bland and has very little texture. The chickens don’t get anything green and really don’t even have to move around. We enjoy good food. I mean we really want to eat good food. We want to eat good food so much that we are willing to grow it ourselves to ensure it’s good. People have asked why we are raising the animals we are. One of the biggest reasons is that we like to eat that meat and want to make the best possible food for ourselves. We are doing this farm thing, instead of a homestead, in order to share with others. Wherever you are, I encourage you to find a local farmer that is growing the meat you like to eat and is raising the animals in a way that you would if you could. Taste their product and see if you can tell the difference. I know we can! Final thought, your chicken doesn’t come from a grocery store—it comes from a CAFO.

Local Farm Report for 6 June 2023:

Harvest:

29 Chicken eggs

4 Duck eggs

2 Goose eggs

5 Gallons of milk

Cheers!

Psycho