Archive of Past News of the Farm:
A Hen in the Kitchen September 6, 2010 |
A Hen in the Kitchen September 6, 2010
Above: Babette, better than a broom.
Greetings Friends of the Farm,
Larry
is a very tolerant man. Easy going. Kind and patient. He grew up in the
Gause community, and helped his parents on the farm, with building
barns and fences, and with their forty-acre attempts at tomato and
watermelon growing. The crops did well -- like Larry, his Dad possesses
the green thumb -- but the selling of such large amounts of a single
type of produce depended on geography and timing more than on nutrition,
taste or agricultural expertise. The same crops came out of the Rio
Grande Valley much sooner in the season than those of Central Texas, and
with the inundation of Valley melons and tomatoes, the market was
saturated. It didn’t pay to even harvest the Butler crops.
Next were cows. If you can’t sell your tomatoes or your watermelons, the logical thing to do is quit being a vegetable farmer, buy cattle, and turn them out to eat the tomatoes and the watermelons. Especially in the 1950s. And so it happened.
After years of cattle, when we started this farm, in 1991, Larry was game to try vegetables again, but with a different perspective: small farm, diversity of crops, certified organic, local market. And no cows. He’d done that, been there. Plus I told him I didn’t want any animal that had to be milked twice a day. Not that I’d ever done that. Nor had he, as the cattle they kept were for meat, not milk.
He didn’t seem to be negative about chickens, which was a good thing. The minute we bought our Gause farm, I attained the chicken habit. After an idyllic summer at the farm, we brought the ten White Leghorn hens back to our house on Highland Avenue. Other neighborhood households had chicken coops in the early 1980s, but year after year, their dedication to chickens waned, while I was firmly convinced that my life would always involve chickens.
And raccoons, opossums, skunks, snakes and dogs....The attendees to chickens, it turned out. Attendees who eliminated the neighbors’ flocks, and took their share of our pets....But I always re-stocked.
As the years went by some chickens stood out in their appreciation of us, or should I truthfully say, of me. For it was I who pampered them, trying to make their existence as different as possible from the fate of their kind in the concentration camps. The first ten White Leghorn hens we bought, in 1982, had been bred and raised for service to the breakfast of American champions, and so their beaks had been melted back to mere nubs. Driven insane, they wouldn’t be able to harm each other, except for standing on the bodies of their dead, diseased sisters in the tiny cages. And those hens had already found their “freedom.”
That summer at the Gause farm, we renovated, to basic “livability,” the shack that had sat on the land for many years, without running water of any kind, nor electricity. We fixed all that, put on a new metal roof, and painted here and there, but not too much, for it really was, in reality, a “total redo.” Which stands there still, in constant shack condition, for it must be admitted, its “bones” are sturdy, almost thirty years later. (Note: this house is not to be confused with the Hut, which you read about in the last News.)
When not working on the big garden or fixing something in the shack, we’d sit around outside with the chickens, who ran around all day long. They would hop up on our knees to snag snacks. We were so amused by them, and didn’t think them “stupid” at all. I should additionally say that we had no television; we had the chickens instead.
One hen had an enormous red comb, the largest I’ve ever seen on her kind. We called her, of course, “Big Nose,” and she was our favorite.
One day, Big Nose flew up to an open window, hopped into the living room, checked it out and chose to lay her egg on the wood floor, in the corner, behind a chair. We really thought that was cool! Such a personality she had!
Ah, but that was then....My latest flock of hens, now one year old, contains many White Leghorns. They are a quirky bunch and some have more personality than others -- just like humans. My favorites of the white ones are the very talkative Spotty Dottie, and Boss Chick and the Babes. One of the Babes died a few months ago, and of the two remaining Babes, Babette, the smallest, has chosen herself as extra-special pet hen. She knows her name and briskly shakes her head when I call to her. And, she talks back.
She comes up to the farm house door, issues plaintive but trillingly high-pitched “weep-weep-weeps,” begging to come inside. Of course, the first time, I was so impressed, I instantly gratified her wish. Unafraid, Babette maneuvered through the open screen door and around the inside door and headed straight for the chicken bucket that she had seen many times in my hands in the Hen House, where I delivered the most exquisite morsels to the hens. Ha! Now she would have first dibs.
Left: Babette is through checking under the stove. Right: Ah, there is an interesting tidbit!
On
repeated visits, Babette has checked out the entire house, but favors
the kitchen. There she finds melon seeds wedged in the cracks between
the old wooden floor boards. Often she can extricate seeds that I’ve
given up on. She athletically squinches underneath the stove to snag
something that flipped under there and stayed. You see, I admit that we
(or I) have not evolved much from our (my) time in the Gause shack.
Above: Babette finds nothing of interest in the entry. Not one morsel. Not even a, ahem, roach!
Babette’s snacking, meandering, and half-querulous comments continue until I fear that I will next have to clean up a speed-processed snack blob, and really, after a short while, she is ready to head back out to see if things have improved culinarily in the yard. Besides, Aunt Penny’s rocking chair, which Auntie inherited from Larry’s grandmother, is not in the kitchen anymore. And even if it were, Babette would likely realize that the ghost of the dearly departed Aunt Penny would not tolerate a quirky pullet settling in on her chair!
Above: Aunt Penny, perfectly happy on her rocking chair.
Larry,
in general, is not usually at home during Babette’s visits. He would
mind a bit, in some sort of theory of civilized behavior, but graciously
he’s tolerated this particular shade of bizarre humor that I find in
our cozy association with chickens. What’s a chicken in the house? As
long as he doesn’t have to clean up any results, he can relax and
consider our other abnormalities. Of which, there are many, and some of
them are in his realm. So there. It is all a part of living close to the
earth in houses with various defects and states of incompleteness and
tawdriness.
To be fair, both he and I would have to concede, that he has his own favorite of our hens: Little Toesy. I’ll be talking about something cute that Toesy did and he always says, with a tinge of fond exasperation, “Oooh, that Toesy!” Meaning, he really likes her spirit and her cuteness, and the fact that she too knows her name and shakes her head in affirmation. He might even be okay with her meandering about the kitchen.
That is, if there is no collateral responsibility for clean ups of any wee blobs.
Next were cows. If you can’t sell your tomatoes or your watermelons, the logical thing to do is quit being a vegetable farmer, buy cattle, and turn them out to eat the tomatoes and the watermelons. Especially in the 1950s. And so it happened.
After years of cattle, when we started this farm, in 1991, Larry was game to try vegetables again, but with a different perspective: small farm, diversity of crops, certified organic, local market. And no cows. He’d done that, been there. Plus I told him I didn’t want any animal that had to be milked twice a day. Not that I’d ever done that. Nor had he, as the cattle they kept were for meat, not milk.
He didn’t seem to be negative about chickens, which was a good thing. The minute we bought our Gause farm, I attained the chicken habit. After an idyllic summer at the farm, we brought the ten White Leghorn hens back to our house on Highland Avenue. Other neighborhood households had chicken coops in the early 1980s, but year after year, their dedication to chickens waned, while I was firmly convinced that my life would always involve chickens.
And raccoons, opossums, skunks, snakes and dogs....The attendees to chickens, it turned out. Attendees who eliminated the neighbors’ flocks, and took their share of our pets....But I always re-stocked.
As the years went by some chickens stood out in their appreciation of us, or should I truthfully say, of me. For it was I who pampered them, trying to make their existence as different as possible from the fate of their kind in the concentration camps. The first ten White Leghorn hens we bought, in 1982, had been bred and raised for service to the breakfast of American champions, and so their beaks had been melted back to mere nubs. Driven insane, they wouldn’t be able to harm each other, except for standing on the bodies of their dead, diseased sisters in the tiny cages. And those hens had already found their “freedom.”
That summer at the Gause farm, we renovated, to basic “livability,” the shack that had sat on the land for many years, without running water of any kind, nor electricity. We fixed all that, put on a new metal roof, and painted here and there, but not too much, for it really was, in reality, a “total redo.” Which stands there still, in constant shack condition, for it must be admitted, its “bones” are sturdy, almost thirty years later. (Note: this house is not to be confused with the Hut, which you read about in the last News.)
When not working on the big garden or fixing something in the shack, we’d sit around outside with the chickens, who ran around all day long. They would hop up on our knees to snag snacks. We were so amused by them, and didn’t think them “stupid” at all. I should additionally say that we had no television; we had the chickens instead.
One hen had an enormous red comb, the largest I’ve ever seen on her kind. We called her, of course, “Big Nose,” and she was our favorite.
One day, Big Nose flew up to an open window, hopped into the living room, checked it out and chose to lay her egg on the wood floor, in the corner, behind a chair. We really thought that was cool! Such a personality she had!
Ah, but that was then....My latest flock of hens, now one year old, contains many White Leghorns. They are a quirky bunch and some have more personality than others -- just like humans. My favorites of the white ones are the very talkative Spotty Dottie, and Boss Chick and the Babes. One of the Babes died a few months ago, and of the two remaining Babes, Babette, the smallest, has chosen herself as extra-special pet hen. She knows her name and briskly shakes her head when I call to her. And, she talks back.
She comes up to the farm house door, issues plaintive but trillingly high-pitched “weep-weep-weeps,” begging to come inside. Of course, the first time, I was so impressed, I instantly gratified her wish. Unafraid, Babette maneuvered through the open screen door and around the inside door and headed straight for the chicken bucket that she had seen many times in my hands in the Hen House, where I delivered the most exquisite morsels to the hens. Ha! Now she would have first dibs.
Left: Babette is through checking under the stove. Right: Ah, there is an interesting tidbit!
Above: Babette finds nothing of interest in the entry. Not one morsel. Not even a, ahem, roach!
Babette’s snacking, meandering, and half-querulous comments continue until I fear that I will next have to clean up a speed-processed snack blob, and really, after a short while, she is ready to head back out to see if things have improved culinarily in the yard. Besides, Aunt Penny’s rocking chair, which Auntie inherited from Larry’s grandmother, is not in the kitchen anymore. And even if it were, Babette would likely realize that the ghost of the dearly departed Aunt Penny would not tolerate a quirky pullet settling in on her chair!
Above: Aunt Penny, perfectly happy on her rocking chair.
To be fair, both he and I would have to concede, that he has his own favorite of our hens: Little Toesy. I’ll be talking about something cute that Toesy did and he always says, with a tinge of fond exasperation, “Oooh, that Toesy!” Meaning, he really likes her spirit and her cuteness, and the fact that she too knows her name and shakes her head in affirmation. He might even be okay with her meandering about the kitchen.
That is, if there is no collateral responsibility for clean ups of any wee blobs.
Above: Toesy, dwarfed by Jaws, the tractor, hard at work on making compost.
Carol Ann Back