Photos by Kelli S. Hewett.
Madison and Hunter Morgan have returned to his family farm to grow their own chickens for eggs and on-site chicken processing as Scratch Made Farm.
Scratch Made Farm sits on 380 acres of fourth-generation rolling family land in St. Clair County, but its real footprint stretches into freezers and dinner tables all over the Trussville area.
Hunter Morgan grew up here, on what he calls a multigenerational hobby farm of cows and horses. His grandfather bought the land decades ago, and his father kept it going.
Hunter and his childhood friend-turned-sweetheart-turned-wife, Madison, married and began life in Tennessee. But during pregnancy with the first of their two children and later with their son’s food allergies, they felt the tug of home and a call to a new chapter: a more health-conscious life, including growing and processing their own pasture-raised chicken.
“We knew we wanted to expand outside of just eggs for our family into meat,” Morgan said. “We decided that if we were going to jump into that endeavor for ourselves, that we should offer that to the community as well.”
Before the Morgans launched Scratch Made Farm, they experimented with backyard chickens.
They studied and found mentors and traveled to research workshops. It all began with 25 chickens.
“We didn’t know what we were doing,” Morgan said.
When it was time to kill and process the birds, it took them all day. Now, with professional equipment and a small crew of family, friends and customers who asked to help, the numbers look very different.
“We now can do on the farm 150 birds from dispatch, where we kill them, to where they’re on an ice water bath in three hours,” Morgan said. “What used to take us 25 for all day long, we’re doing 150 in about three hours.”
Madison didn’t grow up in this life. The former nurse traded scrubs and hospital shifts for chores, gardens and processing days that would make many of her relatives squeamish.
“My family thinks that this is a very — I don’t want to say strange lifestyle — but it’s very taboo to them in terms of wanting to raise your own chickens and process those chickens,” Morgan said. “My family is very supportive, but their support is they watch our children on days that we process chickens, and they purchase chicken from us.”
Morgan said she’s never been weak-stomached, and a medical background certainly helped.
By the end of their first year in 2024, they had raised 250 birds. The next year, 500. This year, they are on track for just under 1,000 — all raised on pasture in 12-by-12-foot floorless movable coops that Hunter or Madison drags forward 12 feet every morning, often with their toddlers alongside.
“We knew we wanted to raise them movable coops, in a regenerative way … better for the animal, better for the soil,” Morgan said.
The Morgans say neighbors, especially those with food allergies, have appreciated having fresh, clean chicken and eggs that are raised and fed with healthy ingredients.
They process everything by hand on the farm under a federal small-flock exemption, controlling the entire chain from day-old chick to freezer-ready bird. For Morgan, that control is about trust — for his own family and for neighbors dealing with serious health issues.
“It’s worth it to us to be able to go out into the freezer and to be able to eat chicken, that we know where it came from, we know how it was raised, we know how the animal was treated,” he said. “We can trust the whole chain, because it was us who did it,” Morgan said.
But for the Morgans, it’s so much more than a business. It’s a choice for a particular way of life and a legacy.
“It’s very sentimental,” Madison said, watching her children explore the same fields where she once rode Hunter’s pony, Strawberry. “I think it’s so special to know that hopefully one day our children will love this property just as much as we do and want to live here and want to raise their family here.”
The long days, early mornings and predator problems might be enough to send another young family running to a subdivision. For the Morgans, it’s motivation.
“You grow up somewhere, and you love somewhere enough, you’ll do what it takes to protect it,” Morgan said. “And so our hope is our children know where their food comes from, and they love the farm and the place that I grew up enough to protect it.”
