Good-Bye Mr. Dove

T

After 2 hours on Criaglist Mr. Dove has a new home. I tell you, if I was looking for a business to be in I'd have one that focused on chickens. I know they don't sell for much, but anytime I've posted a chicken on craigslist.com I've had response in a matter of hours. I've had people drive for hours for some of my extra chicks. Granted, we live in Central New York and you have to drive hours to go anywhere it seems, but still...for a little chick them come from miles.

I thought a rooster may be harder to find a home for because there were a few listed. However, we are taking little Mr. Dove to his new home on the way to the soccer game today. I always get so nervous when we part with a feathered friend. I can't come out and say "you can't eat him!"...though I'd like to. I always charge, because I feel that a free chicken is sure to end up in the pot..but then again $5 is nothing for an organically grown chicken. He's small though....

You can tell that we not actually farmers. It's a shame really. I do see the irony in it. We eat chicken, and I spend a lot on the local chicken. Why can't we grow and eat our own? That was that plan really. A friend and I were going to each grow a small clutch of meat chickens and then trade them. That way we would have no emotional attachment....and neither would our children..to the chickens we were eating. Organic chickens are crazy expensive and I'm forced to only offer chicken occasionally because we are too weak to grow our own food. We wouldn't survive in the wild.

My husband looked at all the YouTube instructions on how to process them and thought for a while he could do it. ( what would life be life without YouTube??? It's the best thing EVER!!) He thought about it for a while and we got all excited about being homesteaders. Then it kind of hit him. One of my sons is a total vegetarian. We are all pretty close to being meat-free (except my oldest son - he would eat a cow on his own if he had never met the cow face to face) I guess we just have to accept that we can't do it. Our chickens keep us in fresh eggs and friendship.

We wish Mr. Dove well, but we know his fate is his own. I don't want to know.