A true harvest moon

This past Sunday I took the commuter train out to Z's farm, where she had been working since 7 am, because she texted me the simple line: "I've got two chickens, one is yours". I think I've been waiting for this moment all of my adult life, well at least since I transitioned to eating mostly local, organic meat after years of being vegetarian: I was going to butcher my first chicken. This opportunity, made possible by several of Z's co-workers who raised their own 20 chickens on the vegetable farm property, was so far off from the daily chores of this city girl that I could not pass it up.

Her text message couldn't have been more timely, as I was just scanning the front page of the NY Times and became sick to my stomach reading the article, "E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection," a story about a young 22 year old woman (from around my old college stomping grounds) that is paralyzed after a near-fatal E. coli infection that came from eating a contaminated hamburger. The ground hamburger was traced back to 3 different sources, "slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria." Eating meat is a complete gamble, there is NO federal requirement for meat grinders to test their ingredients for known pathogenic bacteria.

This is why I went to learn how to kill (humanely), defeather, cut open and clean a chicken. From start to finish there was one person who handled my bird and dinner sunday night represented the freshest meat I have ever eaten, only 3 hours passed since I said a quiet prayer of thanksgiving to the bird that I killed. I have never felt so intimately connected to my food and community. We put our birds in the cooler and then went to harvest a cornucopia of potatoes, carrots, beans, peppers, corn, kale, herbs, apples, and even raspberries. I kept exclaiming, "I feel rich!" The truck was loaded, the berries were balancing on my knees, and we drove back into the city with the full, harvest moon pouring over every turn.

And by "first chicken", I mean we're going to make this a tradition, a conscious effort to raise our own food and live near communities of people that support us in this effort.