Our first all-Sunnywood dinner

While we have been consuming our garden produce and goat's milk all season, I think we may just have eaten our first all-Sunnywood meal: roast chicken, roasted French fingerling potatoes, fresh goat's milk, and a slaw of cabbage, carrots, and scallions. This meal also marks the first time we have eaten our own livestock.

As you can see, this is not your average supermarket roaster, nor is it even a plump farmstead meat breed. This is a lean, mean bird who led an active and happy life.

Meat breed chickens, such as Cornish crosses, are very fast-growing, heavy-breasted birds that can become so top-heavy by eight weeks of age that their mobility is limited. We opted instead for two heritage breeds this year---Buff Orpingtons and Buckeyes---that promised to be good foragers and all-purpose laying and meat birds. They have enjoyed running all over Sunnywood Farm, chasing each other, roosting in the woods, gleaning insects and worms from the livestock pastures, eating grass shoots and weed seeds, and plundering (and adding to) the compost pile.

About half of the chicks we got in April turned out to be roosters. It didn't take us long to find out that more than one rooster is too many. What a racket! And the poor beleaguered hens! So the four most aggressive roosters (all Buff Orpingtons, incidentally) went to the local butcher early this week. (Eventually we will need to slaughter and process animals ourselves, but that learning curve will need to wait until we finish building the house.)

I was prepared for this well-exercised, older (for a meat bird) chicken to be tough and stringy, but we slow-roasted it, breast down, and it was tender, juicey, and extremely flavorful, with nice crispy skin. Delicious.

Next post, coming soon: There Are No Shortcuts in Cordwood.