Whole Fowl

In those early days on Bequia a plump, juicy whole chicken to roast or bake was pretty much unheard of.  Most people had “yard fowl”, scrawny local chickens that, while tasty, were tough and had to be stewed for quite a while.  The grocery stores never sold whole chickens, just legs or wings imported from the United States, and one never knew how many times they had been thawed and refrozen before their final destination.  Big blocks of this chicken would arrive by ferry semi-thawed, then sit behind a local grocery store until the pieces could be separated, weighed and bagged.  Those bags of legs or wings were then re-frozen, and I am frankly amazed that all that thawing and freezing never made us sick.  The imported chicken  pieces were rather tasteless and I longed for a nice fat broiler!

The chicken I bought in bulk for the pizzeria came in five-pound boxes, a step above the bagged chicken sold in grocery stores.  When purchased wholesale from C.K.Greaves the price was reasonable, and as we sold a lot of chicken pizzas we went through large quantities.  We also sold chicken sandwiches and salads and it was therefore important to ensure we never ran out of chicken.  I didn’t even contemplate making a daily special with the boxed legs, to me it was inferior chicken not worthy of the effort.

One day Mac arrived all excited to say that a fellow in Mount Pleasant was selling whole fowl for $3.00 per pound, it was guaranteed to be excellent chicken and he had ordered five of them.  When the chickens arrived I was ecstatic, the birds were large, plump and beautifully cleaned!  We had roast chicken for lunch the next day and it was delicious – moist, tender and tasty.  With such excellent chicken I could make specials for the Pizzeria that would be special indeed, all I needed were more of those Mount Pleasant broilers.

The next time I saw the man who had sold us the chickens I complimented him, it was definitely the best whole fowl I had eaten since my arrival on Bequia. In fact, it was the best chicken I had ever eaten full stop!  I told him we wanted to buy more birds the next time he slaughtered, 30 instead of 5, and he nodded his head in agreement.  He told me he would be slaughtering again in a few days, and that he would bring the chickens to our house at Belmont.  I went home happy in the knowledge that we had more chickens coming, and promptly made space in the large freezer we kept in the downstairs portion of the house.

True to his word the fellow arrived with a large sack of freshly slaughtered chickens, and I stood by with clear plastic bags. Each time he pulled a chicken from his sack it was dropped into a plastic bag, then tied and placed in the freezer.  Soon I had a lovely layer of broilers lining the bottom of the freezer, and turned to write the man a cheque.  THAT’S when he told me the cost was $5.00 per pound now instead of $3.00, which was a huge hike in the original price!  His reasoning was that 30 chickens was a lot more work than 5 chickens, and that I had to pay for his labor. Well, perhaps I was tired that morning or grumpier than usual, because I challenged the man, telling him that chicken bought in bulk should be CHEAPER, not more expensive, and that he should have told me about any hike in his price when I ordered the birds.  Telling me once the chickens had been bagged and put in the freezer wasn’t honest, not the way to do business at all.  It wasn’t the money, it was the principle of the whole thing, and I proceeded to remove those beautiful chickens from their plastic bags.  One by one I dumped them back into his sack as he fumed, and I doubt he has ever forgiven me.

Many years later I had a chicken farm of my own, and you know what? I can’t say I blame the man for raising his price, not one bit!  Slaughtering whole fowl IS labor-intensive, the man had a point!