Marne Litfin - Chicken Harvest

 

I did a little bit of farm work in college and a little bit of farm work after college. When I'm 24, I get this summer job at a Quaker farm camp in Vermont, and I'm going to work in the garden, and I'm going to teach teenagers how to work in a garden, and I'm going to have a very relaxed summer, and I'm going to learn all about Quaker values, and it's going to be real chill. [audience laughter] 

 

In my second week of training before the kids arrive, the head farmer is teaching us about the values of nonviolence, and simplicity, and interdependence, and valuing the light in all of us, and I'm dozing off. [audience laughter] And then, I hear her say, “And that is why we do chicken harvest.” And I'm like, “Excuse me? [audience chuckles] That is not the right verb.” [audience laughter] But it turns out that at this camp-- This camp where we have kids working on a working farm all summer, doing construction projects, volunteering at a day camp, this is a real service-oriented camp. 

 

One of the things that we have the kids do, is raise chickens and then kill them [audience chuckles] and eat them. And because I'm part of the garden staff, I get to run it. I'm a vegetarian. [audience laughter] Been a vegetarian for 20 years. [audience laughter] I worked on farms with vegetables. [audience laughter] I do vegetables. [audience laughter] And I'm like, “Okay, this is what we're going to do.” All summer long, we get these chickens. They're called broiler hens. They're like Franken chickens, and they grow super-fast. They're the kind of chickens that are used in meat processing. They're not cute. They grow these giant breasts within six weeks and their little legs can't even support them. 

 

And so, for the whole summer, every kid has to help take care of the chickens. We feed them every day, we water them, we talk to them, we love them. And then, at the end of the summer, it's time for chicken harvest. I don't know how I'm going to get through it, because I've never slaughtered animal. I've never killed anything. Never wanted to, but I'm like, “Okay, we're doing this.” So, the way that I go about it is that I make sure that everything is perfect. I set up all the stations that the kids are going to go through with their chickens. I lead a training beforehand on how it's okay to cry, it's okay to laugh on accident, it's okay to hit your friend. [audience laughter] 

 

We don't know how we're going to react. At least of all me and every you know we all have to respect each other. And the kids are like, “Okay, okay, okay.” They're looking at me and I'm like, “It's totally fine, right?” And they're like, “You tell us.” [audience laughter] And so, the day of chicken harvest, I wake up in the morning, I assemble all the kids, and I tell them, “Okay, the first part of chicken harvest is to give your chicken the best last day ever.” [audience laughter] I pair the kids up. Each kid gets chicken, and they spend the day cuddling the chicken, [audience laughter] taking the chicken to the lake, doing arts and crafts with their chicken. And then, it's the afternoon and it's time to harvest.

 

I'm so focused on the preparations for it that it starts happening and it happens so fast. And before you know it, first, there's a field of chickens and kids, and then there's just a field. [audience laughter] Within an hour, it feels like it happens in seconds, everyone has killed their chicken and processed their chicken. At the end of it, we're all covered in blood and feathers. I go down to the lake to collect my thoughts, and I want to cry and I can't, because it was so easy. [audience chuckles] I'm looking at my reflection in the water and I'm like, “You are a person who can kill things.” I didn't know that about myself, and I thought, “I can't wait to eat this chicken.” [audience laughter] And most of us don't have the opportunity to know what it's like to kill something, but I know that when the revolution comes, I'm going to love it. [audience laughter] Thank you.