Counting The Chickens

 

Eggs courtesy of Annette and her chickens

 Annette who is my home health professional is also my weekly housekeeper comes in a couple hours every Saturday and spruces up the place little. She does little bit each day she's here during the week waiting for me to do my business but on Saturday she goes in a bit deeper things a bit more makes everything a bit more bearable. Over the year 18 months she's been my care giver we've talked about many things but a constant topic has been the status of her chickens. Annette lives on Eastside of State Street. She lives in the family home with their mother and the properties old enough and large enough that she also raises chickens. I don't know why but this amazed me. She talked about chickens all through the winter and how the spring she was getting a set of checks seven or eight or 10 that she was going to raise up for eggs. Annette indicated she had done this the past and was kind of a yearly thing for her. And sure enough when spring arrived she got her chickens or chicks And watched over them focused as any mother could or would. I look forward to each visit to find out how the chicks were doing. There is one moment that we thought all was lost when Raccoons or Something raided the chicks making off with three or four of them. Fourth chicks remained and their beginning to lay eggs!

We had chickens on the farm. I'm not quite sure how we came about those chickens number of them were bantams. I didn't even know that Bantam was a kind of chick. I know we called them banties and I thought they were just sort of small chickens, which they are, but I was surprised to realize they were an actual breed. We had some brown chickens and of course white ones and a number of them laid eggs which we used as a family food source and I'm sure my mom sold some the eggs to the neighbors along with the milk that we produced on our little farm. I wasn't that fond of the chickens. They were filthy stinking little birds that always seem to be in the way and always had to be taking care of. Actually now that I think of it I don't know if it was my dad or my mom but one of the grown-ups ordered this large incubator that we actually hatched out a bunch of chicks, I remember now. I was terribly impressed. But like everything else on a farm all living things are work. And when the time came to clean out the chicken coop, which was one of my jobs and it may have been one of the most disgusting things I've ever done. Chickens are stupid early some of them are. We had to feed them in their little special feeding canisters as well as fill the water containers daily. There are special devices that you had to put the water in upside down put the base on the flip it over real quick and then gravity would pull the water down as the chickens drank. We had change that every couple days more when the chickens got older. It all came to an end One afternoon in late summer. We had a bloodbath, we chop the heads of dip the bodies in boiling water plucked the chickens and clean them through in the freezer. It was hot, stinky, sticky, and feathers got everywhere. The chicken guts piled up the cats for a static know what happened all the heads but I think we had about 24 chickens. The distant sound like much but when you're that much carnage was blood everywhere.

Annette brought me over a dozen eggs nice little brown eggs that hold together well and make great over easy eating in the morning with slices of spam. I don't think I missed the chickens but I think I miss the time when you could raise 24 chicks to fryers over the course of a summer.