I can't even find stewing hens in our grocery stores - where are you getting yours?

I have butchered my own and if you can come by them economically, it's a great thing to put on your pantry shelves, because it's a ready-made soup base, and great starter broth for chicken and noodles. I have only lost one jar of them over the years and I think it was a slow lid leak due to too much fat in the broth. I cool down the meat/broth after I simmer it off the bone and separate it, so that I can skim off the fat for that reason. You lose a little of the richness by doing it, but it's not safe to try to can fatty broths. I'd imagine the NCHFP has good directions. I usually try to keep some meat/broths on the pantry shelf to hedge against freezer failures when we lose power. Nothing is as exasperating as trying to salvage a freezer full of meat in an extended power outage. It's also a common practise when you home butcher unless you want to stock multiple freezers.

Thank you very much for those details! I appreciate it! There is a local organic chicken farm that we can get them from. They are obviously the least expensive option and I'd love to can meat without a lot of nasties in it:)