The Plan

    It started out as “the thing I told people I wanted to do” when asked about the future. it started as “a cattle farm in Uruguay.” but  I don’t have the time or connections for that, so along with my roommate Martin a plan is starting to form. it’s going to be difficult, and the first step will be the most difficult. Asheville has become my home despite what I thought when I was younger. The concept is still a farm, but it’s more too. we want to be able to sustain ourselves even through economic hardship  and provide goods and service to the community that we’re a part of. not goods or service like you get at the store, more than that we want to GIVE it to the community. a FREE farm/restaurant. free as in beer AND free as in liberty. anyone wanna come live on the free farm? cool! all you have to do is contribute some work now and then.

the chicken

There is a little tribe of chickens on the farm. We killed one of them and ate him.
    They are cute little things with fancy feathers on their feet and are all tiny and whatnot. Asia even has names for them. Names I do not remember. except for charlie. charlie was the weaker rooster of two (when i arrived) and between them they only had six hens. I don't know if you know anything about the reproductive habits of chickens but let me tell you the roosters are no slouches. also among chickenkind apparently consent is shall we say... well "optional" I guess. long story short. it was too many roosters.
    I had known about, and was exited to experience what we were going to do about this. I was eager to complete my knowledge of the journey of meat to table. when we go to the store or we work in a restaurant or whenever, the meat we see is bloodless protein portion-cut and ready to serve. the idea that this was an animal is there but there isn’t any tangibility to that concept. not even after watching videos in school of the whole process was I fully comfortable in my ability to undertake this process.
    The day came early this week when it was too hot to clear but too wet to mow. Asia and I went to the tractor supply store and got ourselves some gloves and a scalpel. i had been researching methods for this and we had it all planned out. in theory.
When the time came to find charlie we let him get away the first time, that was a mistake. Now he knew we were onto him and in pursuit we cornered him under the table and managed to grab him. step one check! now a chicken will become very calm if you hold it upside down. so we did this and managed to pull his head through the bottom of our empty (and clean!) milk jug. step two check! here is where it got a little trying. now we had to find his jugular by finding his pulse. so asia did this for approximately five minutes and had an area of maybe a square centimeter where we thought his jugular was, so I took the scalpel and cut there. strange thing when you cut an animal with something that sharp it doesn’t bleed it just exposes what was under the skin. i digress; I didnt see a bunch of blood nor did I see a vein with the initial incision so i widened it, There! there it was, it looked just like what I thought it would. So carefully and with a tremulous hand I went to sever it and as soon as my blade touched the red cord in charlie’s neck; SQUICK
right onto my shorts went the first of our little friend’s last heartbeats.   
     after he had bled out (the most humane way I had discovered through my research) his little nerves weren't really all done so he struggled for ten seconds or shorter, it seemed like longer.
Asia was a little creeped out by the head being on so we cut it off, and the scalded his skin in hot water to loosen the feathers. after we plucked him and eviscerated him he looked just like any other chicken, except tiny. we washed his carcass and packed him in ice and went on a walk in the woods on the farm looking at wild medicinals and mushrooms.

First post

I used to cook. I thought it was what I loved.
      I was a pretty good cook. I had gone to school (for a while) food that I made got published in a local rag, I had a few jobs that worked out (sort of). It seemed like bosses didn't like me, like I was some sort of anathema for restaurant owners. eventually it got on my nerves and i did something about it. I Quit. I quit my job at the local Indian eatery and stepped out of the service industry forever. After a stint of making resumes and beating the street I looked at what I was doing now, i.e. looking for a new job and decided that I was going to do what I wanted to do in the FUTURE, what i had been dreaming of my whole life. i want to GROW food. not prepare it for old people with no onions or spice or cilantro. I want to make food for my family and grow food for the other assholes to make for the old folks. So i asked my neighbor one evening as we were sitting around and talking over beers in the alley one night, if she; Asia (ffr) would like a farmhand. and she said YES! so now i work on Starberry Farms, makin' farmhouses growing berries, raisin' bees clearing land, taking care of livestock ect. learning for when it's My farm