Fried chicken date night

I am a big fan of Kwik Trip gas stations. I don’t think I’m alone in my appreciation for a well-run place to stop for gas, use the facilities and grab a snack while out and about. I also like deals on things so I got their rewards card and now I get promotional emails from them. Most of the time it’s for things I will never purchase, like buying two overpriced bottles of pop and getting some snack I also don’t want for half off. Sunday was different. The deal was half off fried chicken on account of it being National Fried Chicken Day. I was sold on this deal.

I never did Google whether there was such a thing as fried chicken day or if the marketing team at Kwik Trip was just being silly. Either way, half-priced chicken was going to be dinner. Two of our three kids were off to a dairy judging practice and our employees were all off doing things too, so Emily and I were in charge of chores and then milking. That left our son, Jonnie, making dinner, and I figured he’d prefer to run up to the gas station and grab some chicken instead of making us a meal. It’s not that he’s not good at cooking. He’s quite good at it, considering he’s a 16-year-old boy whose mom makes most of the family meals. But a night off from extra tasks seemed fair after he put in six long days doing second crop hay.

In my last column I talked about how lucky we were getting hay done in exactly the weather window provided by Mother Nature, and surprisingly, we got lucky again. I started out the same way as the first crop, finishing up cutting the first 30 acres in the rain and then the sun coming out for the next five days. The chopper’s pickup head broke while starting to fill the second wagon and a chain broke on the merger, but overall, we were done with hay in record time. Technically there are still three acres of hay lying in a small sidehill field getting rained on, but out of close to 150 acres, that’s not worth being sad about. It will get put up whenever I can get two days without rain again. I saw a couple of people out cutting hay while I was riding my motorcycle to move cattle on the summer pastures in New Prague today, so there must be some good weather on the way.

We were also fortunate that the hot, humid weather broke just in time for us to bring our second group of meat chickens to the butcher. While fried chicken can be enjoyed hot or cold, Cornish cross meat birds don’t like being either of those things. They prefer a nice, mild 70 degrees and tend to die of heart attacks if stressed by handling when it’s hot out. Since we have our chickens processed at a shop 30 minutes from our farm, they have to be handled at least twice and take a ride in the cattle trailer. Everyone that’s around the farm on chicken loading night comes out and helps crate and load chickens so they are loaded quickly and spend the least amount of time in the trailer possible.

Emily and I then get to go on a romantic date in the truck hauling them to Dennison. We always load chickens on a Sunday around dark so we get to listen to “This American Life” on National Public Radio on our way to the butcher shop. When we get there, we put them in rolling cages to wait for their date with the plucker in the morning. I usually stop at Kwik Trip in Northfield on the way home for a snack or drink because it gets hard to stay awake by 11 p.m. with Emily nodding off in the passenger seat.

Until next time, keep living the dream and no, I was not paid to mention Kwik Trip at least three times in this column. But if they want to hook me up with some snacks to stay alert while driving home the next time we haul chickens in, I sure wouldn’t argue.

Tim Zweber farms with his wife, Emily, their three children and his parents, Jon and Lisa, near Elko, Minnesota.