life lessons: where your food comes from

Yasas friends and family!

I am going to preface this post by saying its 2am and I am trying to get this post written before we head back to the farm in a couple hours. So just know this is being written under sleep deprived conditions and I can not be held responsible for the content, but I'm going to try and hopefully you will be entertained by this weeks adventure.

Remember those roosters I wanted to kill?? Well, be careful what you wish for because my wish came true. Stathis, who runs the farm, was given a chicken as a gift from a shepherd after he let some of the shepherds sheep graze on some of his land. The chicken was intended to be for dinner but Stathis explained that it wasn't that big and he isn't too crazy about killing animals so he decided it might be nice to have chickens on the farm and that is where our story begins.

These are some fresh eggs from the chickens that we had in the castle to eat for breakfast. Meg was convinced that the bigger eggs were fertilized and was terrified that if she cracked it open she would find a dead baby chick. So I cracked the eggs, no baby chicks, just double yolks, they would have been twins :) 

As nature has taken its course more and more chicks have been born, these three are peeping all around the farm right now. More and more of these have turned out to be roosters. This is becoming a problem, most importantly to Meg and I because they live right outside our room and the cock-a-doodle-dooing is a little bit out of control. There is also the issue that they will eventually kill each other because they all want to be top rooster; so the group consensus on the farm was that we needed to do some population control, but first one had to be caught.

Filola, Stathis' friend, has done this a time or two and volunteered to help. A couple of times when he was at the farm we tried to catch one with no success. The picture above was taken as Dimos and Filola were discussing that the capture would need to take place under the cover of darkness when they all are asleep in the chicken tree. 

Meg was way more excited about this whole ordeal than I was, she was like a little kid on Christmas morning when it was time and she wanted to be the one to actually kill it. On friday night, once it was dark, Filola went in and grabbed the biggest rooster and handed it over to Meg.

heading over to the site, she is laughing uncontrollably at this point

In everyone's best interest it was decided that Filola would be the one handling the axe so Meg got the job of holding the legs.

prepping

(Meg spent a lot of time covering her face for someone who was so excited) 

This was seconds after the fateful chop, Filola exited immediately while Meg took a minute see if it would run around without its head, she wasn't going to cover her eyes for that. Thankfully, Filola did an excellent job so there was only a little flopping, no running. 

I was actually surprised by how quick and quiet the whole thing was. The people here truly care about all animals and while it was necessary to remove a rooster, before they all killed each other, they wanted to do it as humanely as possible. The rooster had been sleeping and was very calm, it was done fast and in a way that we could use the meat. 

Next step was to move into the kitchen to prep the bird to be cooked. Now it was my turn to participate so I assisted with feather removal. 

This was also Dimos' first time killing a rooster but as the main cook around here he jumped right in, and had the cleaver ready.

Filola, clearly the expert

Then Dimos translated for us as Filola gutted the bird explaining to us all the parts and which ones people like to eat. 

Fast forward to Sunday, Filola came over again to cook the rooster for us, it was cooked with rice in what we are told it a pretty traditional shepherds' way of preparing it. We were told that meat from roosters can be tougher or grainier then chicken but it tasted like chicken to me.

Overall it was a good experience, it was a good reminder to think about what we put into our bodies and where our food is coming from, and to be reminded of what it would be like if we couldn't just run to the grocery store and buy whatever we needed to eat. If you are going to eat meat you should be able to kill it right??  :) The remaining six roosters do not seemed fazed by the impending doom that could be upon them and have continued there cock-a-doodle-dooing and all hours of the day an night but there is talk that one more may need to go so that we can have one cooked in another traditional dish.

I must sleep now, goodnight!