Chicken Soup

The compound gets more farm like every day.  Anya's eight chickens came with a surprise - one turned out to be a rooster!  When picking chicks, she chose one breed that was a fancy, gray little chick that looked like it had a little bouffant hairdo.  The family named her Cream Puff, although I continually called her Powder Puff.  She was scrawny, nervous and scrappy.  Turns out she had her reasons for those behaviors - she was a he!

As time passed, she developed the characteristic red wattles and two weeks ago, Cream Puff discovered his voice by crowing.  It is against the law to have roosters in Scottsdale, because their crowing can be so disturbing to neighbors.  So what to do with Cream Puff?

After much agonizing discussion in the Barry household, it was decided that Cream Puff needed to go the way of chickens for centuries - under the ax   So yesterday afternoon, Anya and I held Cream Puff while Adam did ax duty.

Boiling water to release feathers; sharp knives for cleaning, and a meat cleaver for removal of feet.  Then Cream Puff went into the soup pot.  Here he is before breaking up the meat.

He was small, and tough, but he helped nourish the family that fed him for three months.  Ella was very, very sad as she had been Mother Hen from the start.  John was sad but also curious about parts of the process.  Anya and Adam were both serious about the taking of life and respectful about making it worthwhile.

I have to say that if more people actually participated in something like this, they would be less cavalier and wasteful about their food!  So here I sit, writing this blog on Sunday morning and the back yard is just a bit more quiet.

Rest in peace Cream Puff!