Today’s destination was Tide Mill Farm – and organic dairy and meat operation that I had heard great things about and seemed like a good place to randomly ask if I could camp out. I arrived to a large property with no one visibly around. I put on a brave face and knocked on the door.

Page, the middle child, with her newborn calf (well, not 'her's' really)

An exuberant dog first greeted me followed by an older yet energetic woman. I barely started to explain the nature of my trip before she got distracted by the bald eagle in the distance who’d just had a baby and ‘did I see it fly?’ She was hoping it would take flight successfully since last year the baby fell to its death when it took its first flying leap.

Eventually, we got back on our original track and she was more than happy to let me camp.  It couldn’t be better timing she said – the open farm day was tomorrow and I could get in on the tours and help milk the cows if I wanted to. Speaking of work, did I want to help catch chickens this eve? (As in catch them in their rolling cages to transfer them to crates so they could be slaughtered the next day). Gosh, well I had never caught chickens before. I agreed:  I’m up for any experience this path has to offer me.

And so, promptly after dropping my belongings in my new shack,  I was out in the field, wearing the grubbiest clothes I had, and a borrowed pair of rubber boots from their 10 year old granddaughter Hailey. I joined the family (8^th and 9^th generation Bell family) – Aaron and Carly (the husband-wife duo behind the main farm operation), Aaron’s brother Jesse, the three kids, Hailey, Page (8) and Henry (4.5) and the farm apprentice, Brett.

My task was to fill the water and food troughs of the 10 or so mobile pens (chicken tractors) that dotted the grassy field. While the others ended up taking care of the more challenging task of catching the chickens and placing them in crates in preparation for tomorrow’s slaughter, I had to do some chicken catching of my own as about 10 little guys (about 4 weeks) got out of their pen and were wandering about nearby.

A chicken tractor: Gives chickens space to roam while fertilizing the grass beneath.

The term ‘wild goose chase’ could have easily been used here for chickens. Boy those things can run. But luckily flying isn’t their forte, nor is intellect. So I succeeded without too much running around to get all my chickens in order, so to speak.

After all was said and done, I felt accomplished, and had the clothing sullied with chicken poop to prove it. I also thoroughly appreciated to use of Hailey’s rubber boots as flip flops just wouldn’t cut it on the farm. Every puddle is probably a mix of mud and manure around here. And according to Hailey, more manure than mud.

Cows & the Dairy Industry

The next day I got the full gamut experience on the farm: I saw cows getting milked, I learned how a raw (unpasteurized) dairy operation is kept impeccably clean, and I discussed the tenuous state of farming and how Tide Mill Organic Farm is affected. Aaron and Carly were in the midst of discussing potential marketing solutions to the recent loss of their biggest buyer, Hood. Hood was actually the reason Tide Mill got into the dairy industry. The company was scouting for milk producers in the New England area to boost their supply. Up until then, poultry had been the primary operation at Tide Mill, but Aaron and Carly had always wanted to start a dairy and so they jumped at the opportunity. After all, a chance to have such a big market for their product comes around so rarely, it seemed like an ideal business move. The other side of the coin, however, was their dependence on Hood as their primary market. And so, now that Hood has more dairy producers at its fingertips, it decided to cut off the most geographically remote dairies to save on costs. Like the flip of a switch, Tide Mill was cut out.

Now, Aaron and Carly are getting creative, and have started Moo Milk (Maine’s Own Organic Milk Company) with ten other Maine dairy farms who were simultaneously dropped by Hood.  Media attention and social media efforts abound, but they are still having trouble getting the market they need to keep the business afloat. Ultimately, consumers want cheap food. And organic just plain costs more to produce. If you take treat your animals humanely, keep only a manageable herd, don’t have an overly mechanized farm, feed your animals quality food, and ultimately care about the environment, then of course your operation will cost more to run than those who cut all corners to make a buck. I hope for the wonderful family at Tide Mill that they are able to survive despite these ongoing market challenges.

Chicken

The other main component of Tide Mill Farm, and their more stable side of the business at the moment, is their organic poultry operation. They raise 2,000 birds a year using an innovative chicken tractor method that allows the birds to wander within the confines of a large cage. The chickens fertilize the grass on which the cage rests, and the structure is moved daily to continually fertilize the land and allow the chickens new grass to scratch around in. As a point of comparison, conventional poultry operations house chickens in giant ‘barns’ in tiny cages where they can barely move (sometimes they can never move) and they are often injured or killed due to diseases common in overcrowding. So these here chickens were living the high life (by the ocean even!) in comparison.

I am not naive to the fact that the chicken we eat was once a living animal. But I had never witnessed the actual slaughter of a chicken (or any animal) before and I thought I would take the opportunity to see exactly how it was done. Doing so might also shed some light on my recent decision to go back to being an omnivore (or ‘carnivegan‘ as I like to call myself).

It was hard to watch. The chickens didn’t seem to suffer much, and the slaughter was done one at a time and with care, but it was still difficult to see an animal die before my eyes. If I am going to eat meat though, then it is important for me to really know where my meat comes from and to be able to make the decision to eat it in the most informed and conscious way. I urge everyone to seek out an opportunity to see this done for yourself (and even do it yourself if you can gather the nerve) - especially if you eat meat. I think far too many people eat meat fully relying on the fact that they never have to confront the messy and moral realities of killing an animal themselves. I am one of those people. And after witnessing the process (and being too timid to slaughter one myself),  I now have some food for thought.

Tide Mill Farm was willing to let me film the chicken slaughtering process. They also believe consumers should know where their food is coming from, and their openness and transparency is testament to their vision for a more open and transparent food system. A girl with a video camera wouldn’t be allowed within shooting distance of a conventional poultry operation these days.

Here is the video I shot (my first video edit ever!). I hope you watch it. Just a warning though, it’s a far cry from the sanitized and neatly packaged version of the chicken we see in the grocery stores. But it’s real, and it represents an example of what a sustainable food system that includes meat could look like. (note: the sound kicks in once the video portion starts)