Mike & Karen Heiney: Kany Farm

By Kasey Jones

For Mike and Karen Heiney, it was all about flavor. They remembered chicken and eggs having a lot of flavor when they were younger, but as they grew older, the chicken that they purchased from the store, “just didn’t taste good anymore.”

Kany Farm, (“Kany” was Karen’s childhood nickname) grew out of those embryonic efforts and memories. When the husband and wife bought their farm in Greene County and began to raise their own chickens, they discovered that their poultry actually had flavor again.

“When I would eat at my grandparents’ house,” says Karen Heiney, “they would butcher their own chickens. Throughout our lives, my husband and I have had meat from the farm, so we knew what it tasted like and we just couldn’t figure out what happened. [Our chickens] really have a lot of flavor. When you open up our chickens, there aren’t big globs of fat, so you’re not paying for water or extra broth or salt.”

Heiney grew up in Minnesota where she worked in her father’s factory. She met her husband Mike, who works as a maintenance electrician, in Colorado. When they purchased property in Bulls Gap, it was just that, property, says Heiney. There was no farm. Since then, though, the couple has built up their land and expanded their livestock. Heiney works with the chickens full time, and Mike, who helps with the chickens as a side job, plans to work with them full time eventually.

Not only are Heiney’s chickens more flavorful, they are also chemical-free and organic. “They’re not full of antibiotics or preservatives or chemicals,” says Heiney. “We feed them whatever they get out of the pasture. We feed them grain that we get from the local mill. They do get grain and corn as a supplement, but it’s all locally grown from local farmers around here.”

Likewise, their eggs are pasture-raised and fresh. “They’re only a few days old,” says Heiney. “We sell at three different markets. We sell in Kingsport, Johnson City and Jonesborough. People can get them from us in Greeneville, too. They’re only a few days old, whereas at the store you don’t know how old they are. We have a couple hundred laying hens at home, so they’re very fresh.”

In addition to raising chickens, the Heineys also have a garden. They have a passion for fresh food, but often the garden takes a back seat to working with the chickens, which keep them extremely busy.

Heiney keeps the chickens outside all the time. The chickens live in a chicken tractor that she and her husband move all the time. Besides allowing them to feed off the land and the grain she buys them, Heiney also raises black soldier fly larvae, which she feeds the chickens in winter. The larvae, which are like mealworms, provide the chickens with protein during the winter, since they can’t glean much protein from the cold ground.

Unlike a lot of store-bought chickens, the breed of chicken that Heiney raises is meant to be eaten as meat and is not from a tough laying hen, she says, or an old bird that has been allowed to run around and become tough. “The breed of chicken that I produce is not meant for the crockpot,” says Heiney. “It’s a very tender chicken. It’s born and butchered in nine or 10 weeks. It’s a Cornish class bred chicken. They’re a breed that’s meant to be meat and they’re not going to be tough.”

However, raising chicken comes with a price, and raising and butchering chickens is costly. “I have to take my chickens to Kentucky to have them processed,” she says. “There is nowhere in Tennessee that does small farms right now and I can’t just take them to a butcher’s shop to have them farmed. I have to take them to a USDA poultry place, so I take them to Kentucky. That’s why it’s so expensive and that’s why you don’t find a lot of people who do poultry around here.”

In the end, though, raising chickens has been worth it. Unlike the chicken at the store, which Heiney says, “just get worse and worse all the time,” the Heiney’s have rediscovered fresh flavor by going back to the farm and raising their own chickens.

Karen Heiney’s advice for getting the most out of your chicken

The thighs and the leg quarters are less expensive cuts of meat that you can easily use in a number of different dishes. Picking a lot of the meat off at once and freezing it allows you to make quick, healthy meals when you don’t have much time.

To get the most meat off of the cuts, you can either bake or braise them. After choosing your method:

Pour a little bit of water in a closed pan

Place the chicken in the pan along with a few herbs and put the lid on the pan

Cook the chicken at a low temperature so that the pieces of chicken become crispy (you don’t want them to be rubbery)

After the chicken has finished cooking, you will be able to pull the meat right off of the bone (it’s nice and tender and comes right off). You can then freeze it, put it in a vacuum pack or place it in a jar and can it in recipe-sized containers.  It’s especially good for chicken salad, chicken tacos and chicken pizza. You get the most out of your meat, fresh chicken flavor, and cook-ahead convenience.