It's What's For Dinner

Growing up on a working farm we ate what we raised.  I knew not to get attached to the critters because they’d be on my plate, eventually. When it came to butchering, there were good butchering days and then there were the days we butchered chickens.  Good butchering days were days butchering beef because it always turned into a big family party with cousins, aunts, and uncles all coming to help. The men would do the cutting, rendering mostly familiar cuts of beef and some cuts I’m sure no butcher would recognize. The women would grind the odd cuts into hamburger and package the beef, all the while cooking the choicest cuts to feed the ravenous crew.  But butchering chickens was just the McDonald clan and it’s bloody, smelly, and exhausting.  I’m not talking about just a few chickens here. I’m talking 75-100 chickens. It takes all…day…. long. 
   

Each person has a job.  Dad and my two brothers were set up in front of the garage where there were big blocks of wood for the whacking off of the head and gravel to soak up the blood.  After they chopped off the head and let the blood drain, they’d toss ‘em into the grassy yard. The chickens flopped around for about a minute or so.  After they’re done twitching, my job is to grab them and dunk them in boiling hot water; one of mom’s jobs is to keep the water coming.  Hot water opens up their pores making it easier to pluck their feathers. It’s the worst job, I think, because wet chicken smell is…well….simply put, foul.  Chicken pluckin’ takes about 10-15 minutes per chicken; however, as the day drags on and my strength gives out it takes considerably longer.

Once stripped naked the next step is to burn their hair off.  That’s right, chickens have hair.  Makes you want to chomp down on a big, fatty chicken breast doesn’t it?  Burning the hair is dad’s job because he uses a blow torch.  One more dunking in a bucket of clean hot water to wash off any ash then back to the boys for the cleaning out of the insides.

Next step is into the house where mom and my sister package them whole or cut them up.  Either way last stop is the deep freeze. It takes us all day and pretty much the last thing I want to do is eat chicken, but that’s exactly what’s for dinner.

 If you’ve never had a home cooked, fried chicken dinner, with mashed potatoes, pan gravy, fresh green beans from the garden, hand pressed butter, home baked bread right from the oven, all accompanied with a great big glass of ice cold, fresh from the cow milk, let me tell you, you have not had the best meal of your life yet.  

I know it’s not the healthy choice, but every once in a while I've got to indulge.  And I do. When I bite into that tender, moist, delicious chicken leg, cooked in bacon grease, then savor those lumpy mashed taters, just like mom used to make, with perfectly seasoned pan gravy, it takes me back to the farm with my family, working long, exhausting days stocking our freezer, but mostly smelling that chicken fryin’ in mom’s giant, well-worn, cast iron skillet.