I shall raise ducks

When I was a boy, we had chickens.  We lived in a little town, a village really, in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.  We built a cute little coop that looked like our house on stilts, and a fenced-in chicken yard underneath for them to stroll and scratch in.  Table scraps went into "the chicken bucket," and we kids were rather split on whether emptying the chicken bucket was an odious task or not.  My baby sister and I, having learned from these chickens where meat comes from, reveled in this example of the Circle of Life in our own backyard.  These lessons are etched into my memory with the adrenaline from my first rooster decapitation.  You see, my father's weenie interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath gave him reason to hold the bird instead of the axe.  I, as a nerdy little 10-year-old had to do the deed, but that's another story.  My father is a very fine man: kind, caring, generous to a fault.  He just hasn't fully made his peace with those meat-tearing canine teeth in his head.

This is to say that chickens were something of an epiphany for me.  To me, chickens are a symbol of where food comes from.  When dreaming of a simpler life in the future, those chickens have become an icon of much of what I'd like to see return to my life.  I yearn to be connected to where my food comes from, to be more of a part of the process.  One day, my recipes won't start in the kitchen, they'll start with sowing the seeds, raising the animals, ensuring the quality, care and flavor that I look for in the ingredients that I'm too busy working and schooling and parenting to raise for myself.

( So where am I going with this? Food behind the cut. )

And now to deal with the bluescreen that was summoned by my grandkitten standing on the other keyboard...

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.  
Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902)