By Debbra Mikaelsen

Raising Chicken the Heritage Way

Few things are as simple as the act of eating: open mouth, insert food, masticate, swallow, repeat. And yet, increasingly, few things are as complicated as eating and the choices we make about what we eat. Without meaning any disrespect to dolphins, whales or elephants, I think I can say that no species gives the matter more thought than we do—and yet somehow we have lost our way.

All that thought, and we still end up making decisions based on convenience rather than food quality or flavour. Take the typical industrially-raised chicken, for example.

This would be the time to say that I have the utmost respect for those who maintain a vegetarian or vegan diet. Their choices are admirable and I wouldn’t dream of trying to convert any of them. But increasing numbers of my vegetarian friends say that they would occasionally eat meat if they knew it had been well-treated. They want farm animals to be animals again, instead of exhausted, miserable units of production in a factory environment.

Nature has never been particularly kind, but neither has she ever been a factory farm. All living things have their time, and the end of that time means death. This will be true for the chicken, the farmer, the chef, the waiter and the writer. Few lives are entirely free of stress and pain, but conscious omnivores strive to reduce the suffering of farm animals. (And perhaps also for plants, but that’s another discussion for another time.)

Back to chicken. This is a rather roundabout way of telling you about the best chicken I have ever eaten. I suspect that during its lifetime, it may have been the happiest chicken I have ever eaten. (In actuality, chickens probably aren’t as obsessed with happiness as we humans are. Perhaps what we think of as happiness in a chicken equates to a minimum of unhappiness, and all they’d reasonably ask is to live a natural existence in a pleasant environment.) Anyway, I’m increasingly convinced that the chicken-happiness and chicken-flavour correlation is no coincidence.

Let’s rewind to a few months ago, when I was surprised to hear myself say aloud that I no longer liked chicken. I realized that I’d been not-liking it for a few years. It didn’t taste of anything anymore, and the consistency seemed all wrong. Like farmed salmon. In a word: blah.

Then my husband Phil came home with a Polderside Farm RedBro, and that bird changed everything. As someone who lives in Vancouver and is interested in food, I had of course heard of Polderside. I knew they raised a heritage breed on a farm that was SPCA-certified, but I didn’t know that this bird’s flavour would be so radically different from any I’d had before. When I put the first piece into my mouth, I nearly leapt out of my chair. It was fantastic: moist and flavourful, with a perfect texture, everything a chicken was ever meant to be. Everything that chicken used to be. Really, it was startlingly good.

So I made the trip out to Polderside Farm to ask Virginia and Jens Jacobsen what makes their chicken so special. And what makes their chicken so special is that they do things the old-fashioned way, the natural way that farmers used to farm before this concept of convenient food got in the way of the tried and true. “We’ve always enjoyed eating well,” says Jens. “That’s why we wanted to raise these birds. We couldn’t buy them anywhere.”

When we sat down to dinner (an amazing RedBro and a fantastic duck), Jens refused a glass of wine, because he only drinks on Christmas Eve. The chickens get up at three in the morning, and therefore, on 364 mornings a year, so does Jens. (Please don’t tell my inconvenient cat that Jens gets up at three a.m. to feed his inconvenient chickens.)

Most industrially produced chicken is not inconvenient. “Commercial breeds are all about convenience. Ease for the producer and quick, cheap meat,” says Jens. Years of selective breeding have resulted in birds that gain weight quickly and develop large, tender breasts (stop smirking please), because consumers have come to prefer white meat.

The RedBro is a heritage breed from France, with Rhode Island Red and New Hampshire in its DNA. It tastes the way chicken used to taste because it’s what chicken used to be, not a Baywatch-inspired new variety. This is slow food. Polderside chickens grow at a natural pace, taking nine to eleven weeks to mature. In many commercial operations, birds reach the same weight and size in about half that time.

At Polderside, each chicken (and duck) has two square feet of room to “romp and play,” as Virginia puts it. This is slightly more than the SPCA’s farm animal certification program requires, and almost four times what a factory farm typically allows. It’s important to Virginia and Jens that their chickens play, because playfulness is part of the essential nature of being a real chicken. They take pieces of straw in their beaks and chase each other around the barn in games of chicken tag.

As Virginia says, “We give them the very best life on earth that we possibly can, and they in turn become our best food.” They receive an organic diet of grains and vegetables, topped up with sunflower seeds to boost their immune system, and they live free-run, in a spacious, well-ventilated barn with bales of straw for perching on and hiding behind.

Some people who know little about what it takes to be a farmer have protested that the birds should be free-range—not kept indoors. And perhaps having free access to the outdoors would make these chickens happier still. Or perhaps they would glance nervously up at the sky and fret about predacious eagles and chicken hawks. In any event, the Jacobsens simply can’t risk losing their entire flock to a contagious avian disease; therefore the birds are kept in a barn.

Those with a passion for food are waxing enthusiastic for heirloom tomatoes again, even though they can be more challenging to grow and consequently cost a bit more. They know the real tomato flavour is worth it. I think that heritage chicken will be the next big thing; people who try the RedBro once tend to become hooked on its flavour and, like me, evangelical about the experience.

Convenient food makes me think of instant coffee, TV dinners and boxed mac ‘n’ cheese. It’s hard to get excited about any of those. And convenient meat particularly gives me the shudders. It’s true that inconvenient chicken costs more, but I like beans. I don’t need to eat chicken every week. Personally, I’d rather eat meat less often, and reach a little deeper into my pocket to make sure that I’m supporting farmers who prioritize animal health and food quality.

Debbra Mikaelsen is a Vancouver-based freelance writer and copywriter. She and her cat are both counting the weeks until their next roasted RedBro experience.

TIP: Virginia Jacobsen recommends slow roasting a RedBro at 250ºF for true heritage flavour (but ensure the inner temperature reaches 165ºF before you serve it). Chad Heringer, who took the photo, stuffed his bird with pre-roasted vegetables.

Polderside products are served at many restaurants throughout Metro Vancouver, and available at retailers such as Sebastian & Co Fine Organic Meats in West Van, Bosa Foods in East Van, Heringers in Steveston, Armando’s on Granville Island and Windsor Packing on Main, Vancouver. www.polderside.com