Growing Food

Slagel Family Farm Wants Your Help Bringing Light to Chickens

Photo: courtesy Slagel Family Farm

Slagel is a familiar name in farm to table restaurant circles— the boar used by Scott Manley in the first Table, Donkey and Stick video was from Slagel. Now they’ve got a new project born in horror at the way farming is done by people unlike themselves. As they tell the story on their website:

Recently, a commercial chicken egg production facility came up for sale just a few miles from our small family farm in central Illinois. After expressing some interest in buying the facility, we were able arrange a tour. After seeing the facility in person, we were determined to find a way to buy the property and destroy the caged bird system so it could not get into the hands of another factory farm and continue to operate.

They’ve decided to buy the property and convert it to a more humane chicken-raising facility, with the goal of substantially increasing the volume of humanely-raised farm eggs coming to Chicago restaurants. But they’re looking to people who share this goal to help them raise the money to put a down payment on the factory (and begin dismantling it). As they observe:

The demand for good, natural, locally produced eggs is high and continues to increase. By buying and converting this factory farm into a sustainable, natural farm, we would greatly increase our ability to get delicious eggs to the Chicago market and the new farm would also allow some of our younger family members to become involved in the family farm operation.

Read more about it and see pictures of the existing factory farm facility here.

Slagel Family Farm Wants Your Help Bringing Light to Chickens