(Fair Warning, racially and sexually offensive material may follow.)*
The Chicken Ranch
The boys with the Chicken Ranch.
I’ve purchased “Broilers” from these lads two, three times now. I’m straight and I’ll tell you how good looking they are, as a pair of strapping, country-fed lads with a shock of untamed hair, slightly soiled jeans, and that un-erasable, infectious good humor.
I’ve been around these kinds of lads before. They spend — a lot — of time outdoors. They have a look that’s a cross between an Austin hipster and a real South Texas cowboy. A little too buff to be an Austin cool-kid. Not a shred of self-doubt, either, not in the boys from the chicken ranch.
As a usability study, on their aforementioned website, the first click? “Our Story.” 30 miles, more less, southwest from San Antonio, there’s a town called Castroville. Part of the original Castro land grant, to help settle the area. Before Texas was a country, and for sure before Texas was a state, and that’s where their story begins.
Part of the land. Living in harmony with the land.
In San Antonio, it feels like 90% of the population is “Latin,” or, as the natives refer to themselves, “Mexican.”
Boys from the chicken ranch asked if I liked light or dark meat. I pointed to my date, blond hair, blue eyes, pale complected(1), “White meat, I mean, look….”
They asked again, “Breasts or thighs?”
“You’re trying to get me in trouble here,” how I replied.
They both grinned at me, high-wattage smiles.
“How can you not make jokes?”
The next time I asked about the process they employed, having tapped their site.
“We’re, like, 50 miles from the border, like, in the middle of nowhere, 50 miles from everything. We had to come up with our own process.
“The guy who mentored me, originally, we used this process they used back east. Doesn’t work here; they don’t have predators. We’re, like, 50 miles from the border.
“So we made up our own. You should come out and visit. You’d like it, show you around.”
I asked about the exact method they used to kill the chickens. They described it, the salient point being a slit throat, the carotid artery. Clean and trauma free. Better tasting chicken. No waste, either.
Previously, the Shudde Ranch vendor was telling me how his dad had gone out to help the chicken boys, and upon return?
“Man, am I glad we have cows, not chickens!”
The boys invited me out to see the chicken ranch. Remember the white meat? I look down at her, “No, I don’t think you’re going to the chicken ranch.”
For those unfamiliar with Texas history and myth, the Chicken Ranch was an alleged bordello that operated for over a hundred years, just outside of La Grange, TX, cf., Best Little Whorehouse in Texas(2) (the musical).
Part of the Paleo Plan, my current “eat like a caveman,” script? All-natural. The problems with processed foods are just that, the process (usually) robs all the good stuff, leaving nothing but inert material that might not be that good. As an example?
None of the chicken breasts from the chicken boys, none of the, are the same size. One breast can feed two people, easy. Makes a full meal.
- * cf., the fine print.
(1) Obviously Northern European heritage, originally from Austin.
(2) Based on a true story. Nobody can make up plots as good as our local news.
First time I mentioned Castroville? See the Cancer Horoscope from five years ago. I was in South Austin when I wrote that.