Which Came First

At least today it will be the chicken and not the egg for my posting today. I can remember in the late autumn many of the aunts and uncles with their broods of kids gathering for the annual culling of old hens at my grandfather Raymond Miner’s farm. Because he had a large family, the first coop was a big building with a fenced in dirt area to scratch and peck looking for insects and bits of grass and grain. Weathered clapboard covered the sides and tarpaper covered the roof. Light filtered through the panes of several dust covered windows. The second was much smaller with a raised, fenced floor and sides.

Granddad used a thick wire with a V folded at one end and a loop at the other. The loop prevented the wire from slipping through his hands as he would hook a hen by the leg with the V. The captured hen would flap her wings sending up clouds of dust and bits of straw. Her cackling would stir the other chickens to begin their own cacophony of clucks.

The chicken was grasped by Granddad’s strong hands and passed to an uncle who would stretch the hen’s neck on a stump and lop off it’s head. When several chickens were decapitated, they were carried to the farmhouse to be dunked into buckets of boiling hot water, before the aunts would begin to pluck the feathers. There was a pecking order to this too. The younger aunts started the process and the carcasses were passed to older ones who used tweezers to pluck the “pin feathers” then on to my grandmother Rebecca. She would set afire a piece of newspaper and singe the hairs from the hen.

An older aunt would gut the chicken and lop off its feet before cutting it apart for a trip to the freezer. The first of the flock would end up in a large pot to cook. It was to be our lunch. The meat from them was ground for sandwich spread of the chicken, dill pickles, salt, pepper, and just enough broth to facilitate spreading onto thick slices of home baked bread.

I still hate the smell of wet feathers and singed hair, but try as I might; I haven’t been unable to recreate the flavor of my grandmother’s chicken salad.