"J'ai un tres sale caractere": the secret to Ferme Auberge du Poirier's success

If I believed in reincarnation, I'd want to come back as a Bresse chicken. 

But let me backtrack.  Any producer visit that begins with a feast is already off to a fantastic start.  Even more so when it starts with an aperitif.  Our late arrival at Ferme Auberge du Poirier after our goat cheese morning meant we were effusively greeted by Joel and immediately ushered in to eat.  And eat.  And eat.

Farm fresh salad, everything from their own gardens

Bresse chicken roasted only with salt and pepper
with a side of potatoes dauphinoise

Fromage Blanc with cream - a regional specialty. 
Add your own salt or sugar according to taste.

Plum tart

While we were groaning in ecstasy over chicken that tasted more like chicken than anything else we've ever put in our mouths, Joel kept energetically popping in and out of the dining room to share snippets of his philosophy of agriculture.  You know you're dealing with a true character when he not only brandishes an example of our meal, dead,

but also one alive and quite profusely irritated at being disturbed from his free-range activities.

Bresse Chicken is the foie gras of the poultry world, without any of the controversy.  A distinctive breed with blue legs and feet and the only chicken to have an AOC designation (an Appellation d'Origine Controle), their every stage of life is carefully monitored in order to reach their manifold destiny: fetching 250-350 euros each in stores.  Why so expensive?  There's quite simply no other meat like this.

Each chick is chosen from the Centre de Selection de Volailles de Bresse 15 kilometres away to ensure no in-breeding.  Arriving at the Auberge at one day old, they are sequestered in a heated shed for their first four weeks.   At five weeks, they take their first steps outdoors into free-range heaven.  It is mandatory for these birds to feed on their terroir in order to be considered Bresse, and they have a required 15 square metres per chicken to roam around in.  They must be separated according to age as the older birds develop rivalries with the younger ones; as it is, there are enough chicken fights.  Kind of like a high school cafeteria...

After 16 weeks of roaming, the poulet de Bresse meets his maker, the poulards (females) at 20 weeks, unless they've laid eggs.  As this makes their meat tougher, they get a reprieve and supply the auberge in eggs.  The capons (or castrated roosters) have the longest lives of 8 - 11 months.  Regardless, their last 3 weeks (1 month for capons) are ones of seclusion as they eat the best meals possible, their diets changed daily, in order to grow fattier and therefore juicier.

All slaughtering is done humanely on-site and sold direct on the farm for a lower price than in stores.  A typical poulet goes for 9 euros a kilo, a poulard for 12 and the capons for 25.  Some birds are shipped around France, but as Joel joked, not to Paris because there are too many strikes and delays, or to Marseilles because they'll be stolen.  Ah, the quintessential French disdain between town and country.

Joel is an effervescent character, full of jokes and stories, his hands windmilling while he talks.  Originally Ferme du Poirier was an auberge as well as the restaurant, but as he put it, this is a working farm in the country.  When Parisian clients started complaining about the frogs and the "singing" chickens, asking they be quieted, he focused his energy on the less demanding chickens.  Tant pis for the urbanites - they're missing out...

Clearly, Joel is not.  He is living his dream, spinning new ones for the future, and relishing the life he leads.  And for an afternoon, we were invited to share in it.  What a gift.