The adventure is underway. The chicken coop and pen that my wife Liz and I ordered last week were delivered yesterday. They’re tucked in at the back of our city lot, between the compost bins and the barberry bushes.
Today we’re heading out to stock up on supplies - bedding for the coop, feed, food and water containers, etc. Come Saturday morning, we’ll be making a two-hour drive from our home in central Maine to the southern part of the state, where we plan to buy three or four laying hens from a flock that includes Plymouth Rocks and Rhode Island Reds. (No roosters, thank you!)
The goal here is eggs, not meat. From what I’ve read, both breeds are “dual-purpose,” as they say in the poultry biz, but we’re not planning to slaughter our hens. I still remember when my brother David and I got chicks as an Easter gift one year as kids, only to see them grow into pet chickens that became the main course at dinner. We had no appetite then, and I’m sure that would be equally true now.
I eat chicken, and even the occasional hamburger. Animals must be killed and processed if we are going to satisfy such tastes, and no meet eater can claim otherwise without being amazingly hypocritical. But I’m too sentimental to contemplate eating an animal once I’ve looked it in the eye. Which is one of the many reasons why I’d make a lousy farmer!
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