POST January/February 2015

food
Huber stands at the threshold of the
shift. She’s the first person to get the chickens,
freshly killed and cleaned; she’s the first to
touch them as they become food. She removes
heads and necks, feet and extra skin. Then
she pushes the chickens farther down the
line, to Lepel and me for evisceration. When
we’re done, there’s a final rinse and the legs
are tucked. The birds are put in a cooler,
submerged in ice and water. Ready to bring to
market.
Ready for people to eat. Whether or not
they want to know the story.
“Death feels like failure in our culture,”
says Trish Lepel, Denis’ wife, from just outside
the tent. “I don’t know why that is.”
Growing vegetables involves death too.
But that doesn’t feel like failure. Another
farmer I work with likes to quip that she’s
responsible for the death of hundreds of
innocent seedlings by selecting the ideal
vegetables to grow in a season. She surgically
pulls the undesirable seedlings out of the
starter trays—roots dangling naked and
vulnerable—and tosses them without remorse
into the compost bucket. Or onto her salad for
lunch.
“I had a hard time doing this the first
few times,” Lepel says. He had read some
books, attended a conference. He thought he
was ready. Then he worked on his first farm.
“It was a very emotional experience for me,
killing chickens.”
That’s how the beginning of this season
was at Lakestone. Lepel had processed
chickens before, but Huber and Holtz were
new. It took time for everyone to figure out
where they fit in. To figure out how this
process fit into their hearts and minds.
“It was very intense the first couple of
weeks,” Lepel says. “It’s a heavy feeling when
you start doing it.”
Forty birds means food for 40 families.
High-quality food from animals that have
been treated well in both life and death.
Processed in a way that provides an alternative
to the agro-industrial farm model. Someone
needs to do it, right?
“At least this way the chickens are part of
a closed system,” Huber says. Chicken parts
not sold for food are composted. The compost
is used on the expansive beds of vegetables
that Lepel grows for market. Vegetable
scraps and rejects from the field are fed to
the chickens. The closed system, the cycle of
things. Raise and grow. Slaughter and butcher.
Select and harvest. Food and eating.
“I always say a little something for the
birds before getting started,” Lepel says.
Like a prayer?
“Something like that.” He shrugs. “If that
makes a difference.”
It does. It’s exactly the story we want to
hear about our food.
—Matt Kelly
62 POST | Issue 9 January / February 2015
Matt Calabrese