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!