a chicken by any other name...

A chicken by any other name wouldn't grow so slow. Well it's time to come out with the story of the freedom rangers that are not freedom rangers.  This spring Noah and I ordered what we thought where 100 freedom rangers from Black Creek Farm and Feed and after a few months ordered another batch of 120 "freedom rangers". Turns out these are not Freedom Rangers but what Black Creek Farm and Feeds calls traditional chickens that take 24 weeks to grow! WHAT! That is a lot longer than our 14 week plan. After calling Black Creek Farm and Feed I thought it was the supplier who had made the mistake, they told me I had never ordered freedom rangers and that "their suppliers don't even know what a freedom rangers is". After trying to understand how this misunderstanding could have happened I heard from two other farmers on the island saying that the same thing had happened to them. They also had ordered a chicken that they had called a Freedom Ranger and had ended up with the same Traditional bird. Lesson learned always do everything in writing and get a chicken supplier you can trust. We have already slaughtered first hundred and they tasted great, but had more bone than we had hoped for. Right now we still have 120 in the field, I have to say it's a little creepy when you hear the pitter, patter of 120 chicken feet following you. We also have the broilers that we are raising to make up for the loss on raising the "traditional" birds. But as the old saying goes there is never a loss without some gain, our fields and garden's are getting a poop load of chicken mature. 

Training our newest farm hand
Here at Hillcrest Farms we take these early years very seriously with identifying farm species in black and white as a top priority:) 

the days feel about this dark lately, eating popcorn with the light on