Typically chicken would only merit mention here at Traveling Feast once it made it to a plate, but a friend and colleague, Craig Goodwin, provided us today with a notable exception. Craig is headed a different direction by providing premium affordable housing for chickens in a shaded corner of his backyard. The Goodwins and their neighbors share the eggs (payment for room and board?) but beyond this contribution to the households, these birds have a particularly sweet deal. They are free to wander the yards when the families are home and are addressed by name like other members of the family.
Their housing situation is also clearly upscale with a dedicated laying box, framed in windows, a screened porch, and roosting branches outside and inside.
If any doubt remains, the name of this fowl housing development says it all.
I must say this is a very different arrangement from every Montana coop I witnessed growing up. Friends and family in Big Sky Country certainly didn’t treat their birds as extended family, and most had decided their chickens were anything but ideal pets. To almost a person they cheerfully butchered their birds when the time came in order to stock the freezer.
No such fate awaits the Goodwin brood. In fact, Craig, in solidarity with his birds, will still eat beef and pork but no chicken.
