The weekend of Halloween, we drove to Red Fire Farm in Granby, Massachusetts to visit a good friend, Joseph Wright, a farm intern there at the time.
We’d made plans to stay one night then be on our way, but ended up staying for four days after we discovered a crack in the radiator of our volvo. We couldn’t have asked for a better place to break down and wait on a part to arrive.
12-12-2010 Red Fire Farm – Granby, Massachusetts
from – http://lydiaatkins.weebly.com/2/post/2010/12/http.html
Red Fire is beautiful. Our stay coincided with the end of autumn and the harvest was PLENTY.
The fields and greenhouses were filled with winter squash, rutabaga, leeks, onions, cauliflower, carrots, brussel sprouts, potatoes, and several varieties of greens like kale, lettuce, swiss chard, cabbage, and spinach. As we pulled up to the farm in the evening, we saw Joseph washing that days produce in a large wooden drum that turned as he sprayed it all down with water.
One morning, two of the farm hands slaughtered a group of chickens they’d been raising for many months.
It was the first time I’d seen someone slaughter an animal following the practice of Halal, the Islamic practice of killing the animal by causing it to lose consciousness as quickly as possible through cutting the oxygen flow to the brain and therefore inflicting the least pain on the animal.
One of the fellows is a practicing Islam and is the only male in the area that can slaughter animals this way. The Islamic faith only allows a man of good standing in the community to do the slaughtering. It was amazing to hear him share the beautiful prayers he says throughout the process. Only moments after they’d finished the chickens, a family from the nearby mosque came by unexpectedly with two rabbits that needed to be killed following Halal. That was one interesting and educational morning…
RED FIRE FARM
Halal Butchering
