Memory Monday: Chickens in My Family through the Generations

My mother in the 1930s

CHICKENS IN MY FAMILY THROUGH THE GENERATIONS

I, for one, don’t raise chicken—either for eggs or meat. Now, there is a practical reason for this. It’s not that I’m opposed to eating meat or eggs. On the contrary, I love fried chicken, especially the kind that comes from fast food places and has no bones, and even more so if it has a nice crunchy crust. No, I don’t raise chickens because I don’t want to mess with them. I know first-hand about raising them. My mother had chicken for many years. In fact when I was a baby, she was raising chickens. She raise a large number of them. Then, each week she, along with another woman, would kill and dress quite a number to sell while I lay in on a pallet under the swamp cooler inside the house. All the time I was in grade school, we lived on a farm and Mother had chickens—which we often consumed.
My maternal grandmother also raised chickens. I remember my mother telling me how one time, during the Depression, Grandma raised chicken, hoping to get them to full size in order to get a good price for them. But times got tight, and they had to go ahead and use them for their own meals even though they were still “scrawny.”
Recently I came across an item in a book titled Facts for Farmers, published in 1865, about raising chickens and I’d like to share it:
Shoeing Hens.—"We observe a recent notice, in some paper, of the practice of making woolen shoes (or rather boots), to prevent hens from scratching. A flock of fifty fowls, like our own, would require considerable labor in the manufacture of a hundred woolen boots, which might be worn through- in a short time and need renewing. It is much better, we think, to procure a breed that will not scratch.
When I read the item above I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the thought of great-great, or something, grandmothers fitting little wooden boots onto their chickens. Wondered if they would have to color-code the boots to tell the right from the left? I finally decided that the wooden shoe thing must not have panned out since I never saw or heard anyone talking about it."
As I said at the beginning, just let me go to the drive-thru at Popeye’s, KFC, or Cain’s and get my chicken. Then the only clean-up I’ll have to do is the dirty napkins and the disposable dishes.