Pastured Chicken

We have no chickens available this year ... Due to the fact that our work force here at the farm is shrinking, (Who do those kids think they are - growing up and moving on and starting their own lives?!?! lol) Rick and I decided to collaborate this year with a young couple who wanted to raise chickens for us. Raising pastured chickens in our Northern climate is always challenging. They're just not really conducive to our environment with our daily temperature fluctuations and short growing season. Unfortunately they had a very difficult season and the chickens just didn't grow as quickly as they expected. Here in the valley we book all of our harvest dates a year in advance. As you might imagine this is very challenging as things don't always go as planned and animals may not always be ready for harvest on the date you booked. That's exactly what happened here. They realized the chickens needed more time to grow but were unable to rearrange the harvest dates to accommodate that. They ended up passing on their harvest date hoping to get another but when that didn't work out they harvested the very small chickens themselves. This means we have no chicken for sale as we require provincial inspection to sell our meats. It's so disheartening for them, for us, and for you too. Sigh.