Poultry Crimes and Amaranth

---

The farm has really grown on me this last week, and I believe that this is largely due to the food. Not necessarily the quality or quantity of the food; rather, the satisfaction that is felt when I am sinking my teeth into food that I have grown/killed and prepared myself. I didn't appreciate this feeling when my hand was up a chicken's ass and I was pulling it's guts out, but the feeling dawned on me in retrospect.

We have been experiencing an egg shortage recently, and after a little investigation came to find that the chickens were cannibalizing their own eggs. Robert told us to stake the chickens out, figure out which ones were engaging in the cannibalism, mark them, and execute them at our leisure. It didn't take us long to witness one of the repulsive hens cracking open a shell and gobbling the yoke. We tied string around its neck, talked about killing it for about a day or so (time's weird), and finally got around to it.

The chicken was killed in good humor. Crispin wore his Nicaraguan blanket and delivered a short speech sentencing the cannibal to death at the chopping block for crimes against all poultry. Cornelius, everyone's favorite rooster, watched tranquilly as I lopped off the hen's head.

What followed was typical chicken cleaning. I dunked it in boiling water for ten seconds, then Crispin and I plucked it. We cut open its ass, loosened all the tissue, and ripped the guts out. I consider my stomach a strong one, but this made me woozy. It was disgusting. We then sorted out edible guts like the heart and liver, chopped off its feet, and threw it in some water.

We decided to stuff and bake the chicken. We crumbled up home-baked bread and added onions, garlic, and peppers that we grew, before mixing in cow milk that Robert was given by a neighbor. The chicken carcass was filled with this stuffing, coated in spices, and placed in the oven. An hour and a half later we were tearing into a feast that had been walking on two legs that morning.

The recent chicken feast doesn't compare to my success with Amaranth, however. Amaranth is a beautiful plant that grows a spade-shaped leaf with a purple center before blooming into a vibrant purple flower. It invades like a weed, but has all of the nutrients of spinach. Today, after we were done pruning lime trees and gathering lemons with Robert, I decided to harvest some Amaranth to supplement dinner's chicken stew (courteous of the hen I killed) with a salad. So I perused the farm, plucking leaves whenever I came across an Amaranth plant. I picked a lot, and today was a planting day so I decided to replace what I had taken. I found a bed that I dug during my first days at the farm, weeded it, and gathered a bunch of baby Amaranth plants from the greenhouse. Using my hands, I made some shallow troughs and inserted close to fifty new plants.

On my walk back I was looking at the flowers of some adult Amaranths and realized that they spilled seeds that looked very similar to poppy. I asked Robert, and he told me that the Amaranth seeds could be used much like poppy seeds with baking, and that they were very high in protein. So I got a pan and walked through the flowers, stroking them to coax out their seeds.

When I had enough I went to the kitchen and began to make bread. I kneaded the dough as I talked to some the family of Robert's Tica maid. They were at the farm playing in Robert's pool. My cooking was set back when the grandma tricked me into eating a bit of pepper that almost made my tongue catch on fire and my eyes burn out of my skull. I soon recovered, mixed the Amaranth seeds into the dough, and set it in the oven.

As it baked I got to work on the salad, the leaves of which were from the same plant as the seeds that I mixed into the bread. I cut up zucchini that I helped pick a week ago, boiled eggs I gathered this morning, and sprinkled it all over the Amaranth leaves. I added cucumber and a delicious salad dressing that Crispin whipped up, and allowed the Ticas to sample my Amaranth salad as the bread finished baking.

The bread and chicken stew finished at the same time. Max, a new worker, added some hot sauce he made from limes, peppers, and mangos, all of which we picked today, and we feasted.

Its hard to put into words what a meal like this is like. The bread came from the same plant as the salad, which is also a plant that I have often enjoyed just observing its colors as butterflies swarm for pollen. I planted the same plant that very day in a bed that I dug and sweated into myself. The eggs in the bread and in the salad were eggs that I gathered, possibly produced by the chicken that I had killed which was sitting in the bowl in front of me. The sauce that made the chicken soup so delicious was made from fruits and vegetables we picked mere hours beforehand. I don't know how to describe it better than natural. I know where almost each ingredient I was eating came from. I wasn't creating any sort of ecological drain, consuming pesticides, or supporting evil corporations like Monsanto during my meal. I was, quite simply, eating. In today's world it is rare to be able to engage in something so simply.

---

Photos

The Deed
Observe Cornelius spectating

Crispin and Max helping me plant
That's also the beautiful bed I dug

Amaranth Seeds and Flower
the flower is the long purple one by the pan

Hot sauce
Crispin named it Fruity Fire, because the mango gives it a nice sweet taste