I never realized how frequently we say
“…the chickens will eat it”
“Don’t throw it away the chickens will eat it”
“You don’t like it? That’s OK, the chickens will eat it”
“I have leftover ___. Oh great, the chickens will eat it”
Or the kids: “Um, I don’t want to eat all my peas, the chickens will eat them.” such thoughtful kids, right?!
I could go on… there are 3 kids in this house so we go through a lot of food, but you get the picture!
This weekend we were happy to have some friends and family come over. Saturday night, we were shucking corn and my FIL shucked an “undesirable” ear. You know the kind: bumpy, missing parts, etc. When he was done shucking it all, he walked into the room and said “Well, we have 11 good ears, that should be enough. I had to throw one out because it wasn’t good.”
At that moment, our faces dropped. We didn’t realize it until afterwards, but Grammie and I must have contorted our faces so badly that my husband laughed out loud! What my FIL didn’t realize is
We don’t throw things out.
Why? Because most of the time “The chickens will eat it!”
(Sadly, hubby caught me digging in the trash about 10 minutes later to get that corn cob out for the chicken bucket)
Then, the next day, as I was quietly going behind my kids and their friends taking banana remnants, leftover popcorn, uneaten apples and putting them in the chicken’s bucket, I spied a glass of milk that went partially consumed. Up to this point, it would have either gone back in the fridge waiting for a thirsty kid to request more milk, or been poured out. However, now with new baby goats that are going through a gallon of Whole Milk a day, I immediately grabbed a bottled and saved it for the goats!
So in our house, no scrap is safe from our chickens, and no milk is safe from our goats.
