Coop to Soup

This weekend was chicken soup weekend at the farm. Forty laying hens should've kept laying eggs regularly because the ones that don't? Off with their heads. That's a fact of life and food down home on the farm. When we got the opportunity to attain these birds, we called in the troops. Hanna and Craig (daughter and son-in-law) and my niece Barbara and her husband Blair came for the day. (I got to be B&B's baby Micah's babysitter!)

Here Blair and Craig admire the haul of birds:



Here Jim shows Blair where to chop:



Then the hen is immersed in not-quite-boiling water for a minute or so, which makes the feathers much easier to pluck:



Here a bird is losing her feathers (and then her guts, which apparently no one took a picture of):



From there the birds are rinsed out and then up to six at a time hit the big canner for cooking down into soup:



I brought the batch to a boil, then turned the element down low and left it overnight, about 14 hours. Once the birds were cool enough to handle, the tedious task of separating out meat from bones took place:



Then the meat and broth went back in the pot with onions, garlic, and spices and cooked for awhile longer before I began to put it in jars to pressure can it. Here's a photo of the first pot's worth of results:



This is the base for old-fashioned chicken noodle soup--meaning that just heating and adding noodles is a meal in itself. Or, of course, the cook can add vegetables, rice, or whatever else is desired on that day. There's nothing like the taste of home-made chicken noodle soup, but as you can see, it's a big job to get there!

If you're looking for recipe details, they're here.

Food Action Coalition Meeting

This hasn't been a good week for me to blog, so I nearly forgot to tell you about the local food coalition meeting on Monday evening.

Our eyes were really opened as to what all is going on in our valley to support local agriculture. Here are some of the highlights.

If anyone reading is from the Kootenay region, you might want to get into purchasing grain shares for autumn 2009. What this means is that for $125.00 (paid by April 30, 2009) you get one *share* of local whole grain, which includes 20 pounds Hard Spring Wheat, 20 pounds Hard Winter Wheat, 20 pounds Spelt, 20 pounds Khorasan (also known as Polish Wheat or Kamut), and 20 pounds Oats. Your family can purchase more than one share, and there are additional shares available for lentils and red fife wheat. Sounds like I might need to purchase the grain mill attachment for the KitchenAid!

We have a community greenhouse. Now, this I didn't know. I know there's a community garden--it's just up a block from where I work. But it sounds like the greenhouse is involved in projects with schools and the senior center as well as having 55 participants in a winter harvest project. We need to find out more about this, methinks.

The farmer's markets have been running on Saturday mornings the past couple of summers, and we've gone into town a number of times to get fresh produce that we aren't growing ourselves. Good to know these will continue and that they are looking for ways to expand and be more efficient. I'd like to see them get off a gravel parking lot and into a venue that would offer shade, like a park.

The Garden Hoe folks (I posted a photo of Barry--now I know his name!--on the Seedy Saturday post) talked about the challenges they face in their greenhouse and market garden business, namely time and weed management. They're excited because a group of about 30 regional restaurants are actively seeking local produce.

Jim and I have talked about raising chickens again for meat. We've really wanted to do this because we wanted to know where our meat was coming from and that it was naturally grown (if not organically). But it's a big undertaking, and we are always short on time and energy, so we're very pleased that we'll be able to purchase chickens from a new business start-up here in the valley who has built a poultry barn and fenced off an area for the birds to get outside. We've ordered 10 birds for June pickup and 10 more for October pickup. These will be roaster size (5-6 pounds) and the expectation is that the price will be similar to that of the grocery store. If anyone reading this is local and wants to get in on this, just ask us for the guy's phone number. He's still taking orders as far as I know.

The main presentation of the evening was by Susan, a local beekeeper and orchardist (cherries are the big local crop). She gave comprehensive insight into the challenges facing beekeepers and how to get into the business, saying that there is need for more hives locally to satisfy demand. Who knew that huge apiaries from the prairies bring truckloads of hives to over-winter here in our milder climate and then hire the bees out to pollinate the orchards? Her talk was extremely interesting to both of us in that this is an avenue we've seriously considered pursuing and now we have the information to evaluate.

Apparently these meetings are held monthly, with various local agribusinesses presenting their challenges at each one, as well as reports from the various arms of the coalition. Very interesting. I'm glad we went.