Ten+Six Chicken

    Erin and I love being farmers - most certainly. It is a hard living, but it is definitely worth every hard-earned minute of it! I have to say, though, one of our favorite parts of doing what we do is the food. Our explorations in the culinary arts for the past twenty (plus) years have taken us deeper into understanding flavor and how to achieve it. I am not talking about new recipes or cooking techniques, though. I'm talking about how our relationship with land and animals flows through the entire production system and onto our plates.

  We began to notice over the past few years that many of the hen (female) chickens in our fully free-range pastures were not part of the crowd of birds at the feeders all the time.  For many of these years, we were disappointed because they grew slower and weighed less when we used to butcher them all at once.   Two years ago, we started a program of butchering in waves.  In other words, rather than butchering ALL of the chickens at once, we divided it up into much smaller numbers spread out over a few weeks.  This meant that some of the chickens would reach butcher weight by seven weeks, others by eleven weeks.  

   This lead to an incredible discovery: those same hens grew slower because they were more interested in foraging than fighting for feeder space.  They were the free-est birds in the free-range system. They took longer to grow because they were getting most of their energy from the environment - not the feeder.  This lead to another discovery - they tasted the best.  Erin and I were shocked with the difference.  We realized that flavor comes from a slower growing chicken. This is how I came up with the distinction of Ten+Six Chicken.  All of them are at least TEN weeks old at the time of butcher (some 11-12wks) and reach a whole-bird butchered weight of SIX pounds. 

   Ready for a curveball?  The exact opposite was true with our purely grass-fed beef - but we solved the age issue another way!  I will write more about this in a few days.    ✌️ - Dustin

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