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I made another step towards self sufficiency yesterday by learning how to properly butcher a kosher chicken. Two Black Leghorn roosters gave their lives to the cause. They were the most misbehaving - plucking hens and always causing a ruckus. I still have 50 chickens (way too many) and a turkey (G-d willing, we will have her for Thanksgiving) left!

Thanks to Shai for preparing the lesson and playing the role of the shochet - he did a marvelous job. The two roosters went very quickly and hardly had time to feel any pain before expiring. Rita played the role of the expert plucker and meat processor - many thanks go to her, as well.

It was a bit surprising how small these 14 month old roosters were without their feathers. The meat was much tougher than any store bought chicken I have ever had, there was virtually no fat, but at the same time it was juicy and tasted surprisingly good. I guess that is what you get, if you only feed your animals natural products, limited vegetarian protein and no hormones - small and tasty. Mass production, on the other hand, must have to sacrifice taste to deliver presentable and "reasonably priced" end product.

For a side dish we had potatoes - many of which came out fresh out of my garden the day before. This is the first year I grew potatoes somewhat successfully. I planted fresh regular grocery store bought Colorado eating potatoes (not the much more expensive special seed kind) in a trench filled with grass clippings. Basil, broccoli, parsley, dill, cucumber, onions and carrot tops from the garden enhanced the salad. No fertilizer was used on any of these - only bird droppings.

It's nice to eat food the way nature intended it. On the other hand, fighting pests without insecticides has been almost unbearable. This year's biggest pest - Small White (Pieris rapae) - a cabbage butterfly, whose green caterpillars decimate broccoli leaves and flowers as fast as they crawl on them. In large numbers they are unstoppable. To limit damage, I have been spending about an hour every day manually picking these well camouflaged caterpillars from broccoli plants and then feeding them to the chickens and destroying leftovers.