On Old Hens

A few months ago I was wandering around my mediocre local farmer's market and discovered that the egg stand was selling old laying hens that had passed their laying age! I quickly grabbed one to make chicken stock with and was rewarded with one of the meatiest, most chicken-tasting stocks I had ever had.  I went back to the farmer's market the weekend after making that stock and tried to buy another one.

The discovery I made was quite depressing. It seems very few people actually bought these chickens, not knowing what to do with them, or why you would want old, or not wanting to bother making something complicated by stock. Since the farm found it very expensive to keep the hens, and they had to sell them at a lower price than they would a young chicken because very few people actually bought them since they didn't know what to do with them or didn't want to bother with the task, they stopped selling the old hens altogether.

This anecdote is a portent of the current times. Taste, flavor, and food knowledge are all being lost to the changing food space. Where I differ with much of the food community at large here, is that I don't think the current food movement is helping things. Indeed, my impression is that in many ways it's harming things. I hear the phrase ``is this organic?'' at the farmer's market much more often than I hear the phrase ``Can I taste this?'' or ``What is this [interesting vegetable I have never seen]?'' A production-side (that it be organic) focus elides the benefits of getting fresh vegetables from a knowledgeable farmer who cares about what he is producing (that the product taste good). Tasting nibbles of random leaves at the market is how I pick the farm to buy from, the truly great farms offer truly great tasting vegetables, not a proud sign that says ``locally and organically grown.'' Many of these great farms, producing tasty fruits and vegetables, are organic, some of them are not yet, or not planning to be (it's expensive), some of them are really selling foraged goods.


Do yourself, and the really great farmers a favor and actually taste vegetables, ask about cultivars, use your fancy phone to look things up and learn about them, seek out the rare and interesting, and eat it all.