Farming in the Adirondacks means you only have green grass for about half the year. We can push this number with some season extension tricks but the bottom line is if you believe in the values of raising your animals outside and on pasture, the winter months are not for raising chickens on pasture.
This season we got our first batch of chicks as early as we could since the freezer was just about empty of chicken. This week our first batch was ready for processing and we finally have chicken back in stock!
Chicken has also been in the news recently: did you know that we are in the midst of a national chicken shortage? I didn’t. It turns out that chicken wings in particular are in very high demand, so much so that the giant production supply chain cannot adjust. Here is a great WSJ article about it. I never knew that jumbo chicken wing futures contracts existed!
On the one hand I find it impressive that we as a country can so efficiently produce all the chicken that we eat. After all, Perdue and Tyson can raise a chicken to slaughter weight in just 39 days! While the reality of large scale factory farming is one of the THE reasons we decided to start our own farm business and began to raise meat animals in a way that we believe in, the large scale system is VERY efficient.
But with all efficient systems, as they increase in efficiency the less resilient they are. If demand for chicken goes up, the only way the national chicken production system can adjust is to leverage the law of supply and demand to increase prices and manage supply. If you put national chicken production in the hands of a few large corporations then quick pivots and market resiliency are unlikely.
For us our market demand is always changing and we have to learn to adjust to keep the business going. Maybe a national chicken shortage will help some new folks reconsider where they get their chicken? Perhaps a few new restaurants will be open to the idea of purchasing chicken directly from a local producer? We were in a restaurant for the first time in more than a year recently and we learned that chicken wings were going off the menu because chicken wings were getting too expensive and scarce. When we told the owner we raised organic pastured chicken he did not seem to believe that we could even supply even his small restaurant with chicken…plus our wings did not come steamed and frozen. Maybe change is coming. Here’s hoping.
We are thrilled to raise our organic pastured chicken the way we believe is best. Always on pasture with moves to fresh pasture every day. Organic feed, no antibiotics or hormones: the way good chicken is raised and taste you notice.
Reber Rock Farm Blog 