From day one, we are taught to share.....

Today we picked up a "tote" of chicken grower.  It weighed 503kg!  Yes, that is a lot of chicken food.  And, it cost us $285.00.  Yes, that is a lot of money!  Our entire day today was spent working on the chicken barn, going to the feed store and bagging the 503kg of feed into smaller manageable bags.  When I say the work is endless, the work really is endless!

Which is one reason I am very torn as to whether or not we should "share" our home grown meat birds.  Not only is it a ton of work, it costs a lot of money to raise these birds. I am struggling with the guilt of not making others happy.  From day one we are taught to share....to give up your favourite toy no matter how much it hurts to see someone smashing it into the wall....that's sort of where I am at right now.  Knowing others would like some of our chickens has me torn, am I being greedy not sharing? 

My husband is worse than I am for wanting to give, give, give.  When we started this little farm I laid down the law "what we raise is for ourselves, for our freezer, we are not feeding the nation".  When someone asks him to "share" he can't say "no".  So, it's a debate right now in our household.  He never stocks our freezer, he doesn't buy the groceries so he doesn't know the amount of chicken we actually consume in a year.  Last year we had 10 birds, they were gone in a few months and they were left as roasting chickens.  I was actually purchasing chicken pieces from the grocery store on top of the roasters we raised ourselves.  And I would grab the meat we grew ourselves more often because I know it is the safest food in our freezer.  He is looking ahead at the 40 chicks we have growing now. 

My point is, you cannot count the meat birds before they're in the freezer!  God forbid, something might happen.  Even now with our 24 grown birds we could have an animal attack and lose the flock (praying that does not happen!).  We have struggled to find a processor, we finally found someone in the Valley and begged them to squeeze us in.  The amount of work and money we have put into building our barn this year to nicely house these birds, the beautiful run, the garden veggies they enjoy daily, the daily feed and water, trucking them to processing, driving back to the valley to pick up the packaged product.....the work only ends when they hit the freezer.  I feel we should be reaping the rewards of our hard work and keeping the birds for ourselves.  Deep down, that is how I really feel.  I don't want to sell a single bird.

So, dear reader, this is the struggle on the farm today, whether to share our beautiful, garden fed chickens or not......I hope you don't think harshly of me for wanting to keep every single one for my own family to enjoy.  It is the purpose of our farm, to raise healthier food for our own family......

'til next time.