Last Friday, I wrote about my grandmother and chickens.  What I didn't add was the expertise with which she dispatched a hen.  Not just any old biddy would do.  It depended on whether she was going to fry it, or make chicken and dumplings.  Young hens went to the frying pan.  Old hens went to the stew pot.

So the first thing she would do was decide what she was going to fix for supper before she would call me and say, "Janie, lets go get us a chicken."

Then we would go to the barn yard, she would pick out the chicken she wanted and tell me where to stand and wave my arms if it came my way.  She would back the hen into a corner, and like lightening grab it's neck and with the expertise of long experience give it a rodeo roll in the air and that was that.  

The chicken didn't know it was dead.  They never do.  The head kept squalking and the feet kept running around even though they were not connected any more.  It took a while before both parts gave up.  She would throw it in a boiling kettle she kept outside, and then remove the feathers.  Which went in many a feather bed.  

Farm life wasn't easy.  Farm women weren't very sentimental. I learned early just where fried chicken came from.  It isn't pretty.