This being sustainable, humanely raised, pasture-raised, organic chicken. I had the first chicken we bought from the ranch yesterday and I was underwhelmed. It was good enough, but not spectacular. And it was kind of small. I do have two more to eat and I will prepare them differently, probably frying and rotisserie style. I don't really think it's the fact that I roasted it though. I didn't find their eggs to be all that great either. Maybe that's because I've eaten eggs from our chickens for so long, but the Camano Island eggs are as good as, if not better than, the eggs our chickens lay (when they aren't hiding them) and are far superior to the ranch eggs.

The ranch eggs tasted pretty much the same way as the ones from the store that are cage free, but not pasture-raised. I find this odd because these are definitely pasture-raised eggs, I saw them out in the pasture, but they are supplemented with grain (not soy, not corn) and maybe it's too much of that and not enough of the other? So maybe that's why the chicken isn't as good as I expected it to be based on the incredible flavor of the pork and the beef I've bought from them.

There are a lot more places that pasture-raise chickens as opposed to beef or pork in my county, so I will look for some chickens closer to home. One place I want to check out in person is the In Pastures Green farm in Ferndale. They follow all of the methods I most want in my food and they are about a ten minute drive away. And they are also substantially less per pound, $4.10 as opposed to $5.95. Also their chickens tend to be 4 to 5 pounds as opposed to the 3 to 3.5 pound average at the other place, so one bird will go a lot further, providing 3 to 4 meals instead of 2.

Based on their website and pictures, I think they actually come the closest to raising the chickens exactly like in the book I read, even having gone to train with the same person the author visited in The Omnivore's Dilemma. They also process right there on the farm. They have farm hours tomorrow so I think if the weather isn't too nasty (it's been raining for days), I'll pack up the kids and we'll go see. I really like visiting the places where we get our food from.

They do have ducks, too, so they may have duck eggs, but as of the last update about the ducks, they hadn't started laying, but the date on that was a while ago. I would love to get my hands on some more duck eggs between now and when ours start laying. The Food Co-op hasn't had them again on the more recent trips I've made and I used the last one on Tuesday. They are the best for baking cookies and rolls. Probably cakes, too, but I haven't tried that.

Two of our ducks seem to have paired up so we are pretty sure we have at least one female and will have some eggs eventually. I am hoping the non-paired two are both female as well.

They do require a $10 deposit per chicken if you are going to order them, which helps prevent no-shows. (They slaughter 3 times a year, it looks like). Which is about half the price per bird. So the overall cost seems like it would be $205 for ten 5 lb chickens. Again, it seems pricey compared to conventional chicken, but if you have ten birds and can get 4 meals from each bird, you've got a per meal cost of $5.12 for protein (based on a family of 4 to 5). Even if you could only get 3 meals from each chicken it would still work out to $6.83 per meal. That's pretty good for this type of meat.

I am thinking, also, that since they have you picking up the chickens on slaughter day, that means they don't freeze them, which means I could bring them home and cut up most of them and repackage them so that I could have all legs, all thighs, all breast, all backs, wings, and necks in their own packages if I wanted to. It'd be a bit of work, but I think worthwhile.

And I don't have to order 10. I could start with less. I'll have to think on it.