Christian decided he wouldn’t take care of the chicken: “I am doing all the killing all the time and you just eat, he said. I am sure the both of you can catch and kill a chicken if you want to eat one.” Fine. I had the distinct impression that the message was not really for me: I was just visiting Christian and Bénédicte at their farm. Christian was city born like I was, but now he was married with 2 kids and was operating a farm with 300 sheep. There was also a huge vegetable garden, chickens of course and a pig, a dog and a cat.
I had spent my childhood summers on families’ and neighbours’ farms, and I had witnessed my share of farmyard killing. Christian was somewhat right: killing chicken, rabbits, ducks and lambs was women’s work. Men’s job began at pigs. But Bénédicte wouldn’t hear any of it. So my presence was probably used to settle a score but, hey, Christian was a long time friend, Bénédicte was great, so we courageously went to the hen house.
The enclosure had been turned to dirt by the 40 or so pecking chickens. Short version: we walked toward them and they went away; so we ran after them and they jumped, cackled and flew all over the place. We then had the brilliant idea to enter the hen house, where half a dozen hens were sleeping on a wooden bar. Suddenly, there was a cloud of feathers, and we weren’t able to catch a single one. We laughed and cackled too, but the fact is that we were really bad at this job.
But we knew Christian wouldn’t do it that day and chicken was on the menu. We finally cornered one against the chicken wire fence, caught it, held it on a log and chopped its head off with an axe. Ewww. End of the story. Job done.
Not.
Sure, it was wrong to panic the birds and the stress was bad for the meat but there was worse: apparently, we had killed a good egg layer when we were supposed to catch an old hen. Bummer.
Later this evening, after a couple of bottles of wine and some excellent chicken, we finally agreed. First: if you know what bird should be killed, kill it yourself. Second: three months later it would be pig killing time. My presence was required.