SEEING IS BELIEVING

Since we are "chicken people" now we get all kinds of "chickeny" things sent to us. I recently received this notification of an organic, free range, chicken farm for sale. I attached the first image taken of this farm used in the sales pitch. This is a 420 foot long (longer than a football field) warehouse full of chickens.

When I think of "organic" and "cage free" this is not the image that comes to mind. Yet this is a "certified" organic, cage free chicken farm. It has to be certified by our government because in all of their infinite wisdom they decided the word "organic" should have a specific definition. They also decided they were the only ones qualified to be the gate keeper to decide who could use the word and who could not. After what I can only imagine was hours of debate and thousands, or even millions, of dollars the definition they arrived at for the word "organic" apparently includes this football field of chickens in a warehouse.

I have no problem with raising chickens in a warehouse. The farmer is simply trying to make a living in an ever more competitive industry. I do have a problem with being told which words I can and cannot use. I also have a problem with "certified" definitions of words that make absolutely no sense to me.

I don't consider thousands of chickens in a warehouse organic or cage free. That is my personal opinion. Those words conjure a different picture for me. That is why I like to see my food. Where did it live, what did it eat, how was it raised?

People ask all the time what we do with our chickens in the winter. It's pretty simple--------we give them a choice. They have shelter but can come and go as they please. Guess what they prefer? (even on a day like today where the high is a balmy 1 degree outside) Yes they prefer to be outside. When the sun sets, they dutifully file into the coop and up onto their perches to sleep. Then before the sun comes up, they immediately start clucking and chucking and coordinate the procession back outside to see what the day has for them. My idea of "organic" and "free range" includes a healthy dose of the chickens choosing where to spend their time. They don't like being told what to do anymore than I do. Consider it another reason I simply choose to opt out of the marketing hype. Let me see it. If I'm putting it in my body or asking my kids to put it in theirs, then I would like to know where it was raised, what it ate, and how it lived. Did my egg come from a chicken who was allowed to do "chicken things". Or did it come from an overcrowded warehouse where it was asked to do "warehouse things"?