Funny story on another website: The poster had a relative who worked in a nursing home, and would sometimes bring patients who could leave on a pass home for dinner if they didn’t have any family nearby. While making small talk with one elderly woman, she said it was the time of year for “mud chicken”.
“Mud chicken”?
In early spring, while the maple syrup was boiling down, they would slaughter the spent hens, roll them around in a mud puddle, throw them into the fire under the syrup cauldron, and after a couple hours, they would remove them with a rake, remove the mud by smashing them against a tree stump after they had cooled a bit, and have some delicious, tender chicken. The feathers all came off with the baked-on mud.
