Where does your food come from?

This is a post from June 2006:

We butchered and froze 7 chickens today -- 6 hens and our grand white rooster. After much discussion, we decided it was the ethical thing to do, with winter now upon us, and a few of the hens looking naked. Rather than watch them freeze to death, or knit them tiny jumpers, this was our only option. After being rescued from Camile's three years ago, they'd had excellent chicken lives, but they were poorly and it was time...

My hands now smell of death.

We've worked through the chicken's life-cycle, from tiny baby yellow fluffy things to warm naked carcasses. I should feel somehow more "connected" with the origins of my food, but all I can feel is horror at the thought of taking lives. I did all the appropriate things -- made offerings for their blood, burnt incense, prayed them home, but I'm appalled by what we've done. This afternoon, I'd rather pull a carrot, or buy a processed chook from Coles. And be disassociated from the reality of where my food comes from.