Visiting Polyface Farm and Gathering American Chestnuts

[George Collins]

Yes, the chickens in these types of pens are meat birds. As for how often they are moved and how, well, I'll let the man himself answer that question:

[pa_friendly_guy]

That is fantastic George. The units seem to be very easy to move. Looked like he had some sort of dolly wheels that he slid under the back of the unit to make it easier to drag along. I was surprised that he moved them every day, but it makes sense, that way the chicks never have time to really damage an area, and they always have fresh feed.

[Lollykoko]

Thanks for the video clip, George. Now that you've jogged my memory, it seems I may have seen that set-up in one of the Salatin videos I've watched on YouTube.

The pens seem to be about 3/4 covered for the purpose of providing shade to the flock. Does that sound right? The video I'd seen before showed only one cage with a much larger space open to the sky. I'm wondering if there is a difference in light requirements between different types of meat birds. As I mentioned, I'm thinking of raising "game birds" for the local market and my video watching has been directed in that fashion. Perhaps pheasant or quail have different sunlight needs? Or perhaps I've slept since then and my memory is faulty.

[George Collins]

This morning I put two pork roasts on the smoker. One came from a hog I raised earlier this year. The other was the one purchased recently from Polyface farms. In addition to the pork roasts, there were two chickens placed inferior to the two roasts so the pork drippings could flavor them as they cooked.

Here is the basic recipe followed:

Pecan wood was used in the smoke box.

The meat was left on the smoker for two hours. After smoking, the meat was divided into two crockpots: one roast and one chicken in each. They were slow cooked until the thigh meat of the chicken's measured 190 degrees and the crockpots were turned to the "warm" setting.

My not-so-secret sauce recipe is as follows:
Bar-B-Que Sauce
1 onion, 1 bell pepper and 1 clove of garlic sautéed
1 cup catsup
1 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp Liquid Smoke
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp red pepper
1 tsp Chili powder
1/4 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
About a cup of drippings from meat

Bring to boil, reduce to desired thickness

To accompany the meat, we had asparagus casserole, homemade macaroni and cheese, and Texas toast. To wash it all down, we had lemonade made from trifoliate orange and goldenrod tea.

For dessert, we ate roasted chestnuts.

We had four guests over for the grand taste test and all were admonished to be brutally honest.

The conclusion: the pork I raised was better but only slightly so. (I personally thought the pork from the hog I raised was MUCH better but the general consensus was that it was only slightly better.)

My hypothesis going in was that the two roasts would taste nearly identical considering the similarity between our respective methods. If the difference in the taste was environmentally influenced, the only major difference that I can think of that might account for the difference is that Salatin has feed by his hogs 24/7 whereas mine are fed twice daily and had their grain based diet supplemented with table scraps.

Here is picture contrasting the two roasts prior to cooking (Salatin's is on top):

[matt walker]

Your roast looks lots better to me George. I am assuming that's not one of your Berks though. Among the other variables, I believe the flavors vary quite a bit from breed to breed, so perhaps that is a factor here.

Man, I've been addicted to smoking ever since I figured out I could do it on the rocket stove. I've got a cabinet smoker on there now and have been trying my best to fill it most nights. Smoked salsa, smoked chantrelles, smoked salmon, cod, halibut, burnt ends, chuck roast, pulled pork, all sorts of ribs, lamb ribs, you name it I've smoked it in the last couple months. I'm happy to hear that your pork spent some time in the smoke. I believe it makes a big difference in the flavor over straight crock pot/liquid smoke.

[George Collins]

Matt, I'm happy to say I'm not even familiar with the method you refer to. I've only recently started using the crockpot to finish. Until a couple months ago, I left the meat on the smoker the whole time, the last half of which saw the meat wrapped in foil. I tried the crockpot as a test once and could tell no difference in the taste of the meat. The upside was that the drippings were more easily conserved from the crockpot. Since those drippings are considered liquid gold around the Collins home, a crockpot finish seems like a natural fit.

But now that you tell me about smoking on the rocket stove, I may have to bring my cob-making skills up to the challenge.

[George Collins]

The last of the chestnuts have just been deburred. The final count is 103 seeds that have passed the float test and are now in cold stratification.

Now if the little suckers can just be coaxed into not dying . . .

[boo]

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you George!

[George Collins]

The third taste test where a store-bought chicken was pitted against a Salatin bird, has been completed. In the above picture, the store-bought bird is on the left and Salatin's is on the right.

As for how the taste test was conducted, some background is needed.

Until tasting Jamon Iberico de Belotta, fried chicken was, without reservation, my favorite food. It may yet turn out to hold that distinction as an almost-life-long prize if I ever get a chance to eat cured hams from acorn fattened hogs as regularly as fried chicken. It's hard to simply cast off life long adoration and reverence for something that has been held so near and dear for so long. If both were available side-by-side and if free to choose, I would never pass up the chance to get some of each and never one to the exclusion of the other. As for the actual frying process, I don't care. Even poorly fried chicken tastes wonderful to me. So, of the four meats purchased, this evening's taste test was the one most anticipated even though there was no meat on the table that came from our farm.

The best chicken fryer I know of anywhere about these parts (my momma) was retained for the cook off. No way I would entrust such a momentous occassion to my feeble abilities when a true master had the cast iron hot and her knife sharp.

The two chickens were taken out of the freezer a couple days ago to thaw out. This morning I awoke with the intent of putting in a full day of hard manual labor to maximize my hunger since that is the best seasoning. Towards this end, the kids and I spent the day in the pecan orchard and as a best guess, gathered about 50 gallons of pecans. Being the only one with sufficient body weight to shake a limb, I climbed most of the trees we gathered from. And I know they make those cute little pecan picker-upper thingies but around a bunch of kids, they are too tempting to use as makeshift swords so we go at it the true old-timey way - hands and knees.

We put the first pecan in the bucket at about 7:30 and the last one at 4:30. The only breaks taken was to wolf down a chicken salad sandwich about noon:30, the occassional drink of water from the garden hose and to de-fire ant one of the little ones that was playing when he should have been working.

By the time hog-feeding time rolled around, the legs were behaving most traitorously.

Supper was served about 6:30 and consisted of the two fried chickens which were fried under identical circumstances, homemade macaroni and cheese, turnip greens, cheyenne pepper that Youngblood whipped out of his shirt pocket while sitting at the table, cornbread and, for dessert, sweet potato pie.

I'm a wing man so to make sure the opportunity to get one wing from each plate was not lost (and because the level of hunger was approaching that which made me empathize with Esau) I jumped first. First bite was from the store-bought bird but it had come out of the grease too recently so Salatin's offering had to step up to the plate to bat my hunger pangs first.

I switched back and forth between each bird with each bite until both were consumed.

Salatin's bird was definitely cleaner near the bone which he claims is due to his better bleed out protocol. Salatin's bird was more chewy but I would hesitate to call it tougher. I think a better way to describe it would be to say that it had a better "mouth feel." Salatin's bird was more distinctly flavored - it tasted chickenier.

Having said that, everyone that tried both, loved both.

After tasting both side-by-side, if price were no object, I'd certainly give the nod to Salatin's bird.

But price for many is going to be a consideration. Salatin's chickens sale for about $4.50/pound and the grocery store stuff is less than half that (if memory serves).

I like fried chicken so much in general and liked his bird enough in particular, that strong consideration is being given to trialing his system as soon as practical. I think it possible that a chicken can be produced that would beat each in taste and both in cost.

Time will tell.

Then I will.

[boo]

George, my mouth started watering the minute I looked at that photo of your fried chicken.