No spring chicken.

When you want a full-flavored, wintertime chicken soup, there's no bird like an old bird. Bobo Farm stewing hens are tough old birds, retired egg-layers whose flesh, fat, and bone melts into the most scrumptious broth you can make from any Coop chicken.

Our other chickens are all broiler/fryers. They're young and tender. They're for roasting, broiling, grilling, sauteeing, and frying. The stewing hens, though....when it's cold outside, when there's a dark drizzly rain coming down, that's when they come into their own.

So get out the tattered file-card recipes for Aunt Rose's matzoh balls and Aunt Rosa's albondigas. Google pho. Lay in a supply of onion and garlic, ginger and scallion, carrots and celery root, noodles and rice.

In a celebration of the current national economy, Bobo stewing hens are only $2.20 a pound.