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One pasture-raised whole chicken can cover three meals plus a pot of stock. Here is a simple plan, with cooking times and food safety notes.

If you are not sure a whole chicken fits a busy week, this plan helps. It uses one bird for three meals, with about an hour of active cooking on day one.

This plan assumes a 4 to 5 pound bird. Larger or smaller birds change the amount of leftover meat, not the method.

Eight weeks.

That's roughly how long a Cornish Cross lives before it becomes the chicken on your dinner table. It's a number that surprises people the first time they hear it, and one that deserves an honest answer instead of a marketing spin.

If you've never bought tomatoes from a farm stand, there's something we should clear up before you walk away from a perfectly ripe tomato thinking it needs another week on the vine.

Not all tomatoes turn red.

The tomatoes you've seen your whole life (the round, smooth, uniformly red ones stacked in a grocery store pyramid) represent maybe five percent of what a tomato can actually be. They were selected for shelf life, shipping durability, and color consistency. Flavor was somewhere further down the list.

What we grow looks different on purpose.

Our pigs are raised the way nature intended, on pasture, with sunshine, fresh air, and a diet free from corn and soy. When you buy a butchered pig from us, you're not just getting pork, you're investing in your health. We don’t leave you guessing. From deposit to pickup, we’ll be in touch at every step to guide you through the process and answer any questions along the way.

The Process

Thinking about stocking your freezer with pasture-raised pork? Here's how the process works from start to finish:

If you've hatched chicken eggs before, you have a real head start. The fundamentals are the same: temperature, humidity, turning, and patience. But turkey eggs have their own personality, and going in without knowing the differences is one of the most common reasons a hatch disappoints.

We raise Black Spanish/Standard Bronze mix turkeys here at McGreen Acres, and we hatch in a GQF 1500 series cabinet incubator. What follows is what we've learned and what we'd want you to know before your eggs arrive.

If you’ve ever wondered how to feed your family better, you aren't alone. McGreen Acres was founded on the ideals that what you put into your animals is ultimately what you put in to yourself.

Years ago, we started paying attention to what we were cooking with. However, we realized that those same crops we cut out of our kitchen are the backbone of most animal feed in America.

That realization directly shaped how we feed our chickens.