Beans and Chickens

 

We made a quick trip down to our garden on Friday evening. We had gotten a lot of rain in the days before and even more was expected this past weekend so we weren't very optimistic about getting much done. We didn't. I was able to get the grassy areas mowed only getting the lawnmower stuck once. My wife hoes the beans quickly and we left for home again. As it turned out, we didn't get much rain the rest of the weekend but we were pretty busy with other aspects of life anyway. We were amazed at how quickly the beans above had climbed to the top of the fencing panels we installed at planting. I have a feeling that in a matter of a week or two, it will be nearly like a forest in our bean patch.

One of those busy aspects was that we had to go pick up our annual order of chickens. For probably a decade now, we have bought the majority of our eating chickens from a local(ish) family that raises them every year. In late winter, we fill out an order form pledging how many chickens we want them to raise for us at $X/pound and if we want them whole or cut up and do we want any of the offal. We also sign up for one of three different months that they then slaughter them.

Our time was in early June this year and so I drove to pick them up. It is about a 50 mile drive but is in the area where I grew up which is why I say local(ish). This time they were pretty big birds so I was glad I had my extra cooler with me. It filled all my coolers up with not much room to spare. I used to order whole birds and we still do order a couple every year but the bulk of our consumption starts with cutting the bird into parts. Also, we like to eat specific parts in specific dishes so really don't want to group all the parts by the bird they came on. Thus a couple years ago, we order the bulk of ours cut up by the farm family and we pay an extra fee for the processing required. But it is very nice to just show up with empty coolers where they can dump the parts into (fitting a lot more birds in a smaller space than we can with whole birds) and then when we get home, it is much easier to package them all up for our freezer. The breasts are still attached to the bone so I do some fileting of them but that is not much compared to processing an entire bird.

All the breast bones, along with the backs and necks we threw in a large pot of water and then boiled the rest of the day on our stove. The next day I took out the spent bones and bits of meat (quite bland now after all that boiling) and canned the broth for later use in our cooking. It is our first bit of preservation this year and a welcome one that we always enjoy. I also enjoy it as it doesn't take much effort to make and can the broth. We don't add any salt or veggies to our broth though I would have added veggies if we had some going bad that were handy which we didn't at this time. All that can be done on the other end anyway as needed.