Bringing our Protein Closer to Home

Last week, a team of six women from our City Farm community took on a new challenge: processing the meat birds that we raised. Let’s start with “The Why”: 

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Why raise meat chickens? 

We’ve been pasture-raising meat birds since the Fall of 2025 to deepen our commitment to regenerative farming, diversify revenue streams to support our nonprofit, and master a new skill to pass on to our students, interns, volunteers, and beginning farmers. Alongside challenging lessons-learned, the initiative has been a huge success. The chickens rotationally graze on our pastures, improving soil health as they move. In the end, we have an exceptional, sustainable protein that is sold locally to schools and farm stand customers. 

Why process them ourselves? 

First off, let me say how much we value and respect our local butchers. That being said, we were not thrilled with the amount of stress that our birds endured in transit. We had been transporting them ourselves in safe crates, using humane methods, but there will always be a bit of discomfort during the 40-minute drive through winding roads. By processing on site, our birds are calm and comfortable through the entire process. Butchering in-house also reduces our costs (after equipment investment) which ultimately makes our operation more financially sustainable. It also expands the hands-on experience we are able to offer those seeking practical skills for education and employment like our interns and Regenerative Fellows.

What’s next? 

After our successful first endeavor, we have plans to expand the enterprise. We aspire to  purchase some of our own equipment (this time we had expensive equipment on loan - thank you, Erin Krier!) and once we’ve mastered the skill, we will invite our City Farm community to join us in the process. If you’re interested in learning to raise and process your own protein, let us know! We’d love to help you learn. 

This was a meaningful, challenging, transformative experience that all six of us are deeply proud of. As you can imagine, there’s a lot more to say on the topic… but I’ll end with this final thought: producing food for our community is special work that we are honored to do.