Blog: Little red hens on the North Shore are going green, clean, and sustainable

I don’t eat chicken or eggs, but my family does. I remember as a child my favorite thing to do in the supermarket was poke my seven-year-old vegetarian fingers into the meat (not through the plastic) and mush it around. The poking has now stopped but when I stare into the refrigerated shelves in Foodland or Costco, I have flashbacks of movies like Food Inc., where they discuss several cases of children being killed by E. Coli from store bought and fast food served meats, and I wonder how safe it is. Horror stories like that have yet to claim tofu, which I think adds to the appeal of my pan full of the mushy stuff simmering on a burner next to the pot of shoyu chicken or hamburgers in my kitchen. But my tofu-loving non-meat eating self doesn’t do the feared vegetarian thing and try to impose my omnivorous ways on others, so I’ve been trying to track down some of the cleanest, locally grown, or slaughtered animal products on the island that I can feel mostly guilt free about serving to my family.

After one of my long drives to Costco to purchase their USDA approved organic beef and eggs, I stumbled across Luann sitting at her booth at the Haleiwa Farmers Market. Luann was selling organic, free range and local, chicken and eggs. Wow, three birds with one stone! (No pun intended) Luann and Gary, owners of the Tin Roof Ranch located right out here on the North Shore are covering all angles by being locally produced, sustainable, organic, healthy, and fresh. I soon got on their email list to get the heads up for each slaughter for their wonderful chickens that they always sell out of, most times before they get the market. Their small farm thrives on what appears to be a couple of acres right across from Chun’s beach.

The Tin Roof Ranch is home to a hen suburbia that is nicely arranged with hen houses of all shapes and sizes, some nice shade spots, places to eat, and nice little cozy and private boxes for laying eggs. Luann explained to me in her southern drawl that her chicken’s eggs are ready to be eaten without worry because they are laid with a natural anti-bacterial coating, while store bought eggs have it removed during a wash of soap and chlorine, a mixture that usually penetrates the porous eggshell.

Outside of Chickentown lie several movable chicken houses for the broilers, which I just learned are the birds people eat, and a couple of horses. In a truly sustainable fashion, the broiler houses move throughout the day so the chickens can fertilize the entire lawn, making no need for chemical fertilizers.

Luann, a nurse, explained that she really just wanted to learn where her food came from, and that even though she never imagined she could kill anything, she now chops the head off of the broilers, de-feathers them, and sells them all to enjoy organic, non-E. Coli ridden chicken. She got me wondering ... could I chop the head off of a chicken for the sake of my family? Maybe I could, considering I recently read that a chicken slaughtered and processed in your own yard or small farm is 1,200 times cleaner than any meat processed in a large scale, commercial facility. My boyfriend says the chicken is the best he’s ever had, and my 11-year-old son now enjoys his dinner without the fear he has endured since watching Food Inc. and The World According to Monsanto.

The Tin Roof Ranch was inspiring. Free range organic meat, a beautiful garden, and a daily production of eggs that could feed the entire Duggar family at breakfast. It made me think about the whole North Shore rushing to Foodland for coffee and food during the tsunami scare, and I realized that Luann and Gary were probably some of the few people island wide who could be confident they could eat for a while had the wave hit and destroyed supermarkets and roads preventing delivery of supplies. It made me want to be at least somewhat self-sufficient—maybe a small garden and a few chickens in a simple hen house?

A month or two ago, The Hawaii Independent reported that Kaua’i has has only enough food to feed the entire island for three to seven days at any given time. Shouldn’t we be making land available to grow food, and not hotels? Hopefully as a community we can all take a small step to being self-reliant and sustainable, and if we can’t, turn to and support people like Luann and Gary who are trying.