A Rooster Harvest

A Rooster Harvest

Well, more a reckoning, really. Nobody likes a surly rooster, or a surly person for that matter. But for now, until the law changes, here at the Gunter farm it’s only the roosters that pay a heavy price for their I-will-do-whatever-I-want-and-to-whomever-I-want-to attitude. If there was a way for you to smell the aroma emanating from the pot on my stove at this very moment you would not have to be told what that price was!

“Just doing what’s natural” my eye. Let’s see any one of those wannabe Romeos gather 45 hens up in the wild and keep them in a 150 by 50 foot area just for their entertainment. It can’t be done, especially while keeping an eye out for critters that like to eat chickens more than I love a hot dog, all the while trying to scratch out food to keep themselves alive. There’s no free lunch in the wild. And here at the farm, there’s no pinning down and dragging your fellow detainees around the barnyard just cause you can. I learned this the hard way here at the swamp, soon after my marriage to Sherry Darl’n, that this rule is enforced with a heavy hand. The point is--you can’t always act like an ogre just because it seems natural; I’m still writing this on the chalkboard 5000 times.

What started out as one rooster acting out of hand quickly spread to three as it seemed to be a timed event among the boy’s to see which one could tick off the farmer and his bride the quickest. With all seeming equally good at it, I saw no reason they couldn’t all be crowned king, or should I say de-crowned? Had it not been so hot and late in the day we wouldn’t have any singing Casanovas left at all in the barnyard as they are all past due for their date with the freezer for a long winters nap. As it was, only the most troublesome three were dispatched this day.

Moments from writing this, we will be enjoying our first young chicken with noodles and freshly dug Yukon Gold potatoes, mashed and covered with real sweet cream butter. These will be joined with garden fresh Roma green beans freshly picked, tipped, tailed, and broken into bight size pieces, cooked with some baby Cipollini onions and fried bacon pieces and maybe a little lard for good measure, served piping hot with about five squares of butter melted over the top. Six ears of Indiana sun drenched sweet corn should do a nice job of rounding out the plate with a generous slathering of butter, and a pinch of salt and pepper for me, each corn kernel dripping sunshine. Of course we will have to have a plate of vine ripened Indiana tomatoes sliced thick and anointed with salt and pepper. Sliced white bread or maybe biscuits hot out of the oven topped with blackberry jelly will finish things off. Isn't it amazing how one unruly chicken can make such a lovely dinner?

So there you have it, try to be nice to everyone you meet or someone may have you over for dinner, if you know what I mean.

I’m done talk’n, Matt