vituperation

Late Sunday lunch — which I’m eating as I type this — just like Grandma used to make:

Roasted Flappy McGee, oven fried squash, corn on the cob, green beans, sliced tomatoes, and deviled eggs.
All from Crooked Acres — even the onions in the green beans and the relish in the eggs.

Robyn brined Flappy (yes, we’re still referring to her by name when we talk about her) overnight and she tastes divine. There is a WORLD of difference in taste between a common “yardbird” like Flappy and a factory farmed Cornish X. There is also a world of difference between the taste of Flappy and the farm raised Cornish Xs we used to buy from Farmer Rich, which long-time readers will remember I didn’t like all that much because they tasted “too chickeny.”

Flappy is considerably firmer than a factory chicken. Not tough, by a long shot, but a different consistency altogether. I like to think that’s because we didn’t inject her with water to make her weigh more, but the reality is that older chickens aren’t as tender as the 45-day-olds in the store. She probably would have been tough had she not been brined.

I grabbed the small box hedge near the base and pulled up as hard as I could. The roots pulled out of the earth with a low purring sound as the plant came loose, and I pitched it into the wagon beside me. Robyn decided it was time to revamp the flowerbeds at the front of the house — and by revamp, I mean “remove,” taking up the edging bricks, bark, and some of the plants, for a more natural look — and this morning I was doing just that.

The sound of a car slowing caught my attention, and I turned to see someone turning into the driveway. When I removed all the edging bricks, I stacked them at the side of the road for a game of “how long will it take for someone to stop and take this?” We play that game every time we have something to get rid of that isn’t total trash, from old toilets to towels to toys. Someone always stops.

The answer to today’s game: about 25 minutes.

I took my hat off and pitched it on the porch, because I feel like I look like an idiot in it. I’m just not a hat person, and only wear one when I’m out in the sun. My general hatlessness is one more testament to my cityboy upbringing, I suppose.

The man who got out of the car was about my age and paunchy. He wore wire-framed glasses, a polo shirt, and jeans. A NASCAR baseball cap perched on his head, and as we approached one another I noticed the words “Dale Earnhardt” in script down the side of his car. I think there was a woman in the passenger seat, but the windows were tinted so dark I couldn’t tell.

“Thought I’d check out your bricks,” he said.

“Help yourself. Take as many as you want. I’m trying to make the front beds more part of the yard and don’t need those any more.”

He made no movement toward the bricks.

“Bout how long you been living here?” he asked, looking out towards the back of our property.

I had to briefly consider. Because Crooked Acres feels so much like home, sometimes it’s like we’ve always been here.

“A little over a year,” I said.

He nodded.

“This a good place to live? Ever have any trouble around here?”

“Nah, this is a great place. I wouldn’t recommend living over that way” — I gestured towards the southwest — “but it couldn’t be any better here, except sometimes the traffic is noisy.”

Then, because I tend to ramble: “Closest thing to trouble is a guy who stops by looking for money sometimes, but I told him to stay away a few months ago and he hasn’t been back. I talked to the sheriff about him. They knew who he was, and told me if he came back I should call them and they’d pick him up and have me tell him to stay away in their presence—”

He nodded. “Get ‘im for criminal trespass then. I worked security at the mall a few years ago and that’s what we had to do with shoplifters.”

“Yep. But, like I said, he hasn’t been back so I haven’t needed to call. Other than him begging for money, it’s pretty quiet.” I pointed at the church, currently in services. “Couldn’t ask for better neighbors than that.”

“We live up on English Road,” he said, pointing west. “Been there about five years now. Moved here from Atlanta to run the golf-cart business up in Otisburg. Did that for two years, but then it shut down because they were raising the rent too high, so now I’m looking at different ways to make money.”

He looked around the property again, taking things in.

“How much land you got here? All that back there yours?”

“Yeah, that’s ours. We have about five acres.”

And then the conversation took one of those turns that guarantees an entry on this site.

“That’s what we have, too,” he said. “I see you got some chickens back there. Been thinking about putting some chicken houses up on our property, get that land earning a little bit of money. Those chicken places’ll come do almost everything. They build the building, furnish the chickens and feed—”

“Then come take them off on a truck for processing?” I finished. Thinking, how do these situations find me?

“Yep. I’m glad they do that, too. They said there’ll be some dead ones, that I have to go through and pick them up and incinerate ‘em. Think he said there’s one incinerator for every two buildings. I can pick up the dead ones, but I don’t think I could kill one.”

“Really? Would you believe we just killed our first one this week? We’re going to be having her for lunch today. It wasn’t so bad, actually.”

“How’d you get the feathers off? I tried doing some wild turkeys once, and I musta done something wrong because I couldn’t get hardly any off.”

“I dipped her in hot water for less than a minute, swirled her around, and they pulled right off. Chickens have a little pocket of fat around each feather shaft, and dipping them in the hot water softens the fat so the feathers come out easily.”

I shut up before I could dork out any more with my mental library of chicken trivia.

“You planning on killing more?”

“Oh yeah, now that we’ve done this one I don’t see us ever needing to get any more from the grocery store. We’ve got a regular little chicken factory back there: mother hens, egg layers, some for meat, and roosters to provide a new supply.”

He nodded.

“You ever think about setting up a big chicken house back there?” he asked. “They told me you can make $150,000 a year off each house. I think I may try to set up two.”

“I can’t say I ever really thought about it. We’ve got pigs back there now, and we’ll probably put a cow or two out there over the winter. I’m mostly interested in trying to produce as much of our food as I can. Especially since the economy is headed south.”

“I heard that.” He shook his head, a grim look crossing his face.

“Besides,” I said, smiling. “I don’t think my neighbors would like me too much if I put twenty thousand chickens out there. Chickens have a pretty distinct smell. With fifty, it’s not bad, but I couldn’t imagine what twenty thousand would be like.”

Twenty thousand chickens, crammed into a building baking in the August Alabama sun, is something I don’t want to imagine.

“How many batches of chickens will a chicken house do in a year?” I asked. “Six? Eight?”

“Three, I think.”

“Really? I thought they’d do more than that, because they kill them at 45 days. They’re bred to grow like gangbusters, those commercial birds. I would think they would put more than three batches through a house in a year.”

“I don’t know that much about it,” he said. “I’m just looking for ways to make some more money. Forty five days? Really?”

“Yep. It’s the breeding. They cross a Cornish and a Rock, and the baby chicks are hybrids that don’t do anything but eat and poop. By the time they process them at 45 days, they weigh as much as 9 pounds.”

(Flappy, for those interested, weighed 2 pounds, 14 ounces after cleaning.)

“I had no idea.”

“Think about it,” I said, shrugging. “They’re in it to make the best profit, right? The heavier the birds, the more money they make.”

He nodded again. “That what kind of birds you have?”

“Nah, ours are plain old chickens. Reds, Rocks, Delawares, things like that. Mostly egg breeds or dual purpose breeds.”

I grinned.

“They live a lot longer than 45 days here,” I said. “That one we just killed lived almost a year and a half. She was so old it’ll probably be like trying to eat a boot. Treat ‘em well, kill ‘em fast. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

“I sure would like to see your operation when you get it going.”

My inner Tim Allen grunted inquisitively.

“My operation? We’re not planning to sell the chickens or any–”

“Oh, I know, I know. I just mean when you’re processing more, I’d like to come see how you do it.”

He extracted his wallet from his rear pocket and pulled out a personal business card, which he handed to me. At the same time, he extended his other hand.

“I’m Tom,” he said. “Tom Cruise.”

Seriously, he had the same name as a famous man (who was in a movie with Mr. Cruise, now that I think about it), only spelled a little different.

I shook his hand and told him my name, thinking there’s no way in hell I’m going to call a stranger to come watch me kill and clean chickens.

We loaded the bricks into the back of his car. As we did, I noticed he had two big stickers showing the number three — Dale’s number — on the bottom of the trunk lid, so they’d be showing to the world when the lid was up.

After he left, I returned to the flower beds and started shoveling mulch. I felt like I should go hug a chicken.

Yes, I am aware I could have taken the opportunity to lecture him about the evils of factory farming. I prefer to lead by example, and will leave the sanctimonious grandstanding to the vegans.

This movie was far better than it should have been.

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