The Cost of a Chicken

Have you ever made something from scratch, and then stopped to think about how much money you would want for it if you were going to sell it?  Maybe you’ve knit a scarf, thrown a bowl on a pottery wheel, or made one of these stupid sock creatures?  When you start doing the calculations, it goes something like this:

(the number of hours it took you to make it) x (some sort of hourly wage) + the cost of materials

And you realize that you have a slightly scratchy $300 scarf on your hands.  Then the next time you happen upon a nice, soft hand knit scarf that costs $60, it doesn’t seem like such a bad deal.

I bring this up because I’ve been applying this line of thinking to my food purchases of late.  A lot of it is inspired by my recent reading of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, in which she describes a year during which she and her family raised as much of their own food as possible, and for what they couldn’t raise, relied on local food whose source they knew.  It’s also inspired by a recent New York Times Magazine article in which the author describes paying $35 for a free range chicken at the farmers market.  He didn’t want to spend that much, and couldn’t really afford to spend that much, but he already had the chicken in hand and when the farmer told him the total (5lbs. of chicken @ $7/lb.) he was too embarrassed to set the chicken back down in the cooler and walk away.

Now, I don’t have $35 to spend on a chicken, and I’d sooner become a vegetarian than spend that much on meat.  But on the other hand I’ve been thinking:  how much would I want to be compensated for a chicken I had raised myself?  I’d have to figure in the cost of the chick (or the egg it hatched from), as well as the price of feed over the months that I had been raising it.  Then I’d have to factor in all those mornings that I had gotten out of bed to feed the chicken, and the time I had spent engaging in the (presumably unpleasant) task of cleaning up after it.  Then there would be the physical labor of slaughtering and plucking the bird, then packing it up and driving it to the market (don’t forget the cost of gas), where I would sit for a certain amount of time waiting for a buyer, before loading back up and heading home (using more gas).

I’ve never really had a head for numbers, but all of a sudden $35 doesn’t sound quite as outlandish as it once did.  And I’m also growing increasingly wary of buying chickens that are too cheap.  How many other chickens was that poor little bird crammed together with so that $1.99/lb could still yield a decent profit margin?  And what on earth did that chicken eat?  What hormones was it injected with to get those plump juicy breasts ready for the supermarket in the shortest time possible?

This is a very roundabout way of saying that last week I spent $14.50 on a locally raised, organic chicken.  This is a significant portion of our family’s weekly food budget (I’ll write more about that another time), but it was an expense I thought worthwhile.  And because it wasn’t super cheap, I was careful not to waste it.  Here’s what I did with it:

Homemade Rotisserie Chicken with Fresh Lime and Marjoram

Zest of two limes

Juice of .5 lime

1/4 tsp salt

5 cloves garlic, crushed or finely chopped

1 TBSP olive oil

1/2 tsp marjoram

Combine all ingredients listed above then rub into the chicken.  Cut the limes (that you took the zest from) in half and stuff them into the cavity.  Roast at the appropriate temperature (depending on the size of your bird) until the juices run clear.  We enjoyed this with some homemade black beans and a salad.  Makes delicious leftovers too!

Now, is anyone interested in buying this lovingly made sock creature?

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