I was nine years old when I gutted my first chicken. For a typical farm kid coming from a long line of farmers, this was actually a pretty late start. At every family get-together I can remember, the oldest members of the family would recount heartwarming or hilarious stories about this hog-killin’ and that chicken-killin'—as if it were some sort of party. As a child and self-professed lover of furry creatures, I was absolutely horrified by all these accounts. I wondered how killing something as sweet and harmless as a chicken or as cute as a pig could be any fun at all. So when my dad told me what we’d be doing that Saturday, I felt only dread.
Nevertheless, when Dad woke me Saturday morning, I dutifully pulled on some work clothes and trudged down to the barn with him. It was a glorious fall day—the sky clear and just beginning to brighten, the air cool and crisp—and I might have enjoyed it had I not been thinking of what was to come. When we got to the barn, I instinctively reached out to catch a chicken to hold it, as it was my habit to visit the barn and just pet them when I was upset about anything. My dad looked on and smiled a sad sort of smile, and as he got out the hatchet and sharpened it, he simply told me, “That’s going to be your job today. Catching them and bringing them to me.” I must have been petrified, because my grip was loose enough that the chicken hopped down out of my arms. Dad simply finished sharpening the hatchet and gave me that smile again. He gently patted me on the head and headed off to the chopping block.
I cried for a few minutes after he left. I was angry with him. I didn’t understand why and I didn’t think it was right that these sweet, innocent creatures that we’d raised from hatchlings should die at our hands, even if it was for our own consumption. I wanted with all my heart to defy my father and stand up for my avian friends, but I didn’t. When he called me from the yard to bring the first chicken, I caught the first one I could reach. I took it to him, and had to hold its weakly struggling body while he cut off its head. I didn’t cry then, I was just in shock. Even after its last convulsions, even after all the blood had finished spilling from its neck, even after its head disconnected from its body, its eyes remained open. I never knew things died with their eyes still open like that. We scalded the body and took in to my mother who was waiting by the sink to gut it and clean it, and this was the routine for the rest of the day.
When I had brought the last of the doomed chickens up, the sun was already beginning to set. Dad scalded it and plucked it; I excused myself from the yard, now littered with feathers and heads. I escaped to the kitchen with Mom and found that aside from the smell, gutting was not so bad. Even with the certainty that we would eat these things that had moments ago been alive, being away from the evidence of their life was comforting. We worked in silence, and when we’d pulled the gizzard from the last body, Dad called for me to help feed at the barn. Mom seemed to know how I was feeling—as moms tend to do—and she hugged me tight before she let me go grudgingly out of the house.
Dad didn’t even try to make small talk while we were there. He seemed to know, too, and I wondered if maybe he’d felt similarly the first time he killed chickens. As I looked out the driveway and onto the field, I saw the younger chickens that had lived to see another day. It looked like a Thomas Kinkade painting: the golden rays of the dying sun were streaming across the pasture, onto all the little creatures scratching around in the fallen leaves beneath the sycamore tree. I was overcome with emotion, again, and started to cry. Dad came up and put his arm around me and waited for me to speak first. Finally I asked: “Dad, why do we have to kill the chickens? Why can’t we just buy chicken at the store?”
He was silent for a moment. Then he gestured to the scene in front of us. “Don’t those chickens look happy?” he asked gently. “Don’t you think all the chickens that live on our farm have a good life?” I nodded. He then explained to me that the chickens that we bought at the store were raised in concrete buildings; they never saw the sun or got to scratch for bugs or feel grass beneath their feet. They were injected with hormones and they didn’t live in wide open spaces like ours. He said it was an industrial operation, that the people who raised those chickens didn’t care about them. “Do you want to give those people our money, sweetie?” he asked me. I shook my head. “It’s just how life works,” he explained. “Some say ‘eat or be eaten’, but I believe chickens and everything else are gifts from God, and it’s our responsibility to give them the best life we can, because they give their lives for us. Does that make sense?” I nodded. Of course it did. I wasn’t crying anymore. I was suddenly almost happy for the chickens; in later years, I truly would be happy for them and for the valuable life lesson they helped teach me.
Now we raise pigs and goats, too, and we sell the meat at farmer’s markets. When people approach our booth, we practically sing out our catchphrase: “Happy pigs make better pork!” Some people get it, and know it to be true, but some don’t. It’s funny how I see myself at nine years old in some apprehensive soccer mom or businessman, wondering aloud to me how I can stand to eat something I treated like a pet. I understand my dad’s sad smile now; I give it out to these people regularly. I then explain to them that I don’t believe in the way animals are raised in industrial farms, and that I believe that animals deserve the best life they can have—which includes being loved and pampered. They usually nod respectfully—they understand that much, but they’re still grasping at straws.
It’s the natural way of the world, but it took a day of wallowing in sorrow for me to understand that. Everything has to die at some point; death really is a part of life. And if an animal has had a life under the sun, running free through the grass or the woods, eating its natural diet and being loved and pampered, it has had a good life, and that’s good enough for me. The most profound thing about this discovery is that having cherished the life of an animal so dearly, I now have a greater appreciation for where my food comes from. The realization that something had to die for me to eat makes it much more precious, and makes me much more thankful. This is what I tell people, and every time I do, it reminds me why my parents raised me on a farm. I think back to that perfect fall day and the chickens scratching beneath the tree, and I realize that those chickens changed my life, and more importantly, my perception of the world.