How to S.L.O.W. roast a whole chicken with garlic (Farm to Table version)

Roasting Time: 90 minutes
Preparation Time: 12 months, plus 4 months and 2 days, 12 hours and 15 minutes
Ingredients:
1 free range mostly organic home raised chicken
20-40 gloves of home grown garlic
2 Tablespoons butter (sorry...we don't raise dairy cows or make our own butter) 
Salt, pepper and thyme sprigs (yes, we grow the thyme)
Total cost: More money, time, sweat and cursing than any meal should require = Priceless 

Preparation:
12 months...

Plant garlic cloves in early September. Mulch with compost soil, straw and cover with coffee sacks.
In early spring, remove the burlap coffee bags

Clip garlic scapes in July (as they begin to curl.)  = Side Track...dry in dehydrator for several hours, chop in food processor, mix with salt to make garlic scape salt!

Harvest garlic in early August (or when the leaves become brown). Hang out of sun light but in the breeze for 1 month. 

Clip and brush each head of garlic to remove dirt and roots. Store in house

4 months and 2 days

Order chics in early spring.
Pick up at the feed store (this year it was June)
Keep them under a heat lamp until their feathers emerge, about 6 weeks. We use a plastic swimming pool in the garage. 

Move them outside to the chicken tractor = Side Track...build a chicken tractor the summer or two before. Sara is good at it but it adds a few weeks to the preparation time of this dish!

Morning - let chickens out to free range. Move tractor to clean grass, replenish food, water and grit

Evening - move chickens into tractor and say a prayer that predators stay far away!

Repeat daily for 4 months - the last month, you may need to move the tractor to fresh grass twice per day.

After 4 months, load the chickens up in a truck or trailer and drive them for processing. 

Be sure to call early in the summer for an appointment. This year we needed to take them to Brainard, MN. This added two days of driving to the preparation time. 

Store the chicken in the freezer until you are ready to roast it (actually, it should thaw for a couple of days in the fridge...adding 2 MORE days to the preparation time!

12 hours 

7:30 a.m. (in the spring when the maple sap is running) - build a fire.
Feed the fire, using dry downed wood from the forrest, for approx. 12 hours.

= Side Track...Tapping trees, hauling and storing sap, primary boil (day 1-12 hours), secondary finishing boil (day 2-6ish hours and then can or bottle maple syrup! 

...and Paula says; "I sure hate to waste all of those coals!"

15 minutes

Make sure someone else is tending the fire and sap!

Peel 20-40 cloves of garlic and place in and around chicken
Rub 2 Tbls butter in and around chicken
Sprinkle with salt, pepper and thyme

*Borrow cool cast iron pot from your pal!

Using a l-o-n-g steal shovel, move coals aside to create a hole. Carefully set the caste iron pan into the red hot coals! Then carefully shovel the set aside coals on top of the pot.

Leave buried in the coals for 90 minutes

Carefully remove the coals from on top of the pan and dig out the pot. (I carried the hot pot into the house using the metal shovel! Headlamp required at this point in the process.) Be careful not to set the pot down on ANYTHING that could burn or melt!

Use a meat thermometer to make sure the chicken is done. 

ENJOY slowly and with immense gratitude and great intention!

Good Night Hannah Dog

 

Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving

But how can they know it's time for them to go?

Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming

I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?

Who knows where the time goes?

song lyrics by Sandy Denny 

It was a slow gradual decline with a rapid plummet at the end. Our dear Hannah dog, curator of all things Nammah's Place, left us for the last time. It was time for her to go. March 15, 2021. 

What has become clear in the last few days of reflection and memory stroll, is how inextricably interconnected she is with this place. Nammah's Place WAS Hannah's Place! She arrived at 3 months and spent all of her (one month shy of) 14 years here. She owned this place and knew it. It was her free range dog paradise. 

I believe with every core of my being that Hannah was meant to live, and die, here at Nammah's Place. This dog who came to us with anxieties about being tied up, or fenced in, or left alone - found a place where she could run free (most of the time!)

I (Paula) have learned so much from this gentle soul: How to greet each day with a fresh enthusiasm. What unconditional love really looks like. And how to age with strength and grace. 

[maple syruping, March 13, 2021]

In her death I am finding new lessons about grief. There is something so complete about her life and death. She lived fully until the end and in the end was clearly used up. I could not ask for anything more. Not even another day! It would feel wrong and selfish. Grief with gratitude!

More familiar to me is grief with regret. Want for more time. Regrets about what was or wasn't. With Hannah, there is none of that. I have no regrets and there was no more to want for!

In fact the opposite is true...prior to my retirement from UMD I heard myself say: "I just want a full year at home with my dog." No rushing off to work or being distracted by a busy schedule. When I start to twist elements of regret into my grief, I think about how I was given exactly what I asked for (plus 13 bonus days!) It makes me smile. COVID19 allowed the gift of a daily 24/7 for a full year! I find it hard to imagine it being any more complete.

And still we grieve. A full and complete life is still a fatal and final end at death. Because Hannah WAS Nammah's Place, she is everywhere here. At each location I find myself on our property, I know exactly where Hannah would be perched while joining us there. Her preferred perches were clear and not to be dissuaded! Her preference for the side of the gravel road (between the house and garden) when we were in the garden - was particularly unnerving. It was as if she wanted a front row seat to the infrequent passer by. As they slowed to avoid her, she was sure they were stopping to chat (or pet.) 

Hannah was a garden dog.

A woods woman!

Spirit Field appreciator

A lover of little visitors (and older ones too)

She loved the front porch
And her favorite position was repose!

Good night Hannah. I don't know where the time goes, but I am forever grateful for your time with us.

"What makes you think I was out digging?"