If they grow it, can they kill it?

There was an eerie silence when the hatchet came down, severing the chicken’s neck in the backyard in Nelson. “It was a first for me,” says Jon Steinman, host of the syndicated radio program, Deconstructing Dinner.

“Just the silence that happened at the moment when the chicken lost its life,” he begins. “I became more connected to my food and directly related to the loss of my food’s life.”

LISTEN to the "Backyard Chickens" series on Deconstructing Dinner, produced by CJLY, Kootenay Co-op Radio in Nelson.

The segment, part of his ongoing series, Backyard Chickens, featured a young Nelson couple who raise poultry on their home property undergoing their first slaughter. Luckily, Steinman says, they chose to have a person experienced in animal husbandry handle the kill.

Raising chickens in your backyard in Nelson is illegal, he explains, but some searching for more control over their food are flouting the laws – and hoping they don’t get caught.

Since 2006, the former city slicker from Toronto has hosted over 110 shows examining the food we eat, how it’s produced and what we can do to take back control of the food system.