My grandmother—the one who lived on a farm in Catalonia a long time ago—used to raise chickens and rabbits for the table. My grandparents were landowners, and they lived literally surrounded by food, from olives and grapes to pigs and snails, yet not one crumb ever went to waste.
Here is what my grandmother did with a chicken, or with a hen whose laying days were over. I don’t remember watching her kill the birds, or how she disposed of the feathers—she must have dumped them onto the manure pile—but I know that she saved the blood for the pigs. The lungs and intestines went to them too. But the liver and gizzard were served along with the rest of the bird (I can hardly stand to say the word gizzard now, much less eat one). And as a special treat for me, her only grandchild, she saved the testes. Yes, I grew up on chicken testes, and lived to tell about it.
Every chicken yielded at least two dishes: a meat dish, and a broth. The broth was made with chickpeas, potatoes, greens, and the chicken carcass, including the head and feet. I can still see those pale yellow feet with their pale nails, floating in the simmering broth. Mercifully, my grandmother strained them out after they had given up all their substance, and threw them to the ever useful pigs. The meat dish included, along with breasts and legs, the comb. I remember how it looked on the serving platter—kind of decorative, as if its scalloped edge had been cut out with nail scissors. I used to have dibs on the comb, too, in addition to the testes.
My grandmother’s chickens lived a good life, scratching and scavenging in the farmyard, and they died with dignity. The dignity came not just from her expertise with the ax, but from the respect with which their remains were treated. Nothing was ignored; everything went to nourish someone, whether human, animal, or vegetable.
Unfortunately, the omnivorous habits of my childhood did not last. As a quasi-vegetarian, today I can only bear to eat chicken if the portion on my plate is anatomically unrecognizable. But my grandmother’s attitude towards food did stay with me. For years I kept a few hens so they would eat our leftovers, then transform them not just into eggs, but into manure with which to grow the next season’s vegetables, which we would eat and in turn produce more leftovers to feed the chickens, and have nothing go to waste. My grandmother never mentioned the cycle of Nature, but she was firmly rooted in it.
Even though my chicken keeping days are over, those roots still live in me. Now that not just the American economy, but the entire world seems to be in imminent danger of crashing, it would be comforting to have half a dozen hens and a garden to feed and be fed by, and to give me at least the illusion that I am in tune with the earth, and in charge of my own survival.
6 Responses
You certainly had a close relationship with your grandmother’s chickens.
My only close encounter came with a turkey. My mother walked my brother and me to a neighbor’s house where they raised turkeys for Thanksgiving. David and I
freaked out when the ax fell on the turkey, who then ran around headless! My mother had been raised on a farm and didn’t realize we would be so upset. We were not included on her next trips for turkeys and chickens.
I imagine you think of that long-ago turkey every Thanksgiving, no?
what memories of my growing up your story brings up. We lived next door to my dad’s parents, who used to keep a few goats and chickens during the war. By the time I came around it was only chickens, but the little barn still stank of goat. (My aunt and her husband in the next village over raised the yearly pig, and a few cows for daily milk as well. ) I well remember that pig meeting its end on a cold November morning, and the ensuing frenzy by friends and family to process all the goods, and in the evening have a big slaughter feast with freshly made soup and sausages. Ick, even as a child. – I also remember well my grandmother catching a chicken for Sunday dinner, and chopping off the head with an axe over the dung pile. I don’t remember being scared, I think it was made plenty clear to us that this was food and the way of life. How far we have moved from those days. I wish I had a few chickens, but it’d be more work, and so Im not interested. ….
We have moved far indeed. So few children now know where their food comes from. I never witnessed the pig slaughter at my grandparents’, but the descriptions I heard were exactly like yours.
This way of life is natural – and an incredible amount of work.
I am grateful to the hordes of people, many of them women, who process the poor chickens raised in company’s barely adequate spaces, and turn them into something I can stand to eat. I don’t think I’d make it in their world.
And it isn’t going to be easy to grow meat in vats!
Bring on the meat grown in vats, I say! The older I get the more I think of the suffering of the animals we grow for food.