An astute customer attended one of our farm tours last year. And after thanking us for sharing the farm with her, she smiled and leaned in close and said something I won’t ever forget.
“There’s so much joy on your farm,” she said. “But, compared to the other animals on the farm, I didn’t feel a lot of joy or positive energy around the meat chickens.”
I didn’t have the courage to admit it in that exact moment, but I knew exactly what she was referring to. The pigs light us up. The laying hens and the ginger too. But the meat chickens? We never really felt a lightness (what I consider to be a byproduct of joy) there.
Part of that heaviness came from the demands of processing chickens every week through the entire summer, for 4 years in a row. But the other aspect was that the system we adopted for raising broiler chickens (which you can see in the photo above) never quite fit our farm or our sensibilities.
After this passing conversation and some time spent reflecting, we wrote this newsletter and closed the book on broiler chickens, for good. Or, so we thought.
When COVID hit this spring, we were thrust back to the drawing board. With a little bit of panic settling in and with all your positive feedback about our chickens top of mind, broiler chickens were back on the list for the 2020 season, but with one gigantic, immovable, HARD LINE.
We were going to do it our way, which meant scrapping everything about the way we used to raise them. And adopting a brand new system for raising broiler chickens that gave the birds a wilder, free-er life AND gave us, the farmers, higher joy potential.
I’m happy to report that the new system worked like a charm. Truly, we’ve just spent the last 7 weeks finding joy raising meat chickens again. We can’t wait to share them with you next week and we have our friend and customer, Sue Rose to thank for that.
Your Farmers,
Jenney & Greg