My dad did, and it was gross. When we went to grandma's on my mom's side there would usually be a fight for the feet and gizzards among the older men. Not me.
My grandma and her sisters would have a full day of cleaning chickens. Good eating for sure.
Woman's work. The men, and us child laborers, spread the manure and worked the gardens around the farm house. I can still picture grandma's cast iron skillet. Black as a lump of coal, and filled with chicken.
Heh,sounds like you got to skip the middle man, so to speak. My younger brother and I went chicken-catchin with my grandma. My proudest day came when I was about 9 (I think) and grandma handed me the leg hook so I could catch dinner. Our family was big enough that it took two chickens to make Sunday dinner. When I caught the chicken grandma grabbed it and took it over to the choppin' stump. It had a couple of strategically placed nails hammered into and and grandma would put the chicken's neck between those nails, pick up the axe and WHACK! Off goes the head. then she'd turn the headless carcass loose to flop around for a while. When the carcasses quit flopping, we hauled them back up to the house where there was a great big pot of boiling water that we dunked them in for a few minutes to soften up the feathers. Then we pulled them out and started shucking feathers. Grandma took care of gutting them and cutting them up for frying.
