Just Bitching

It’s that time of the year when I regret living where I do. The beginning of March, The weeping willows branches have turned yellow and from a distance on a sunny day seem to have a golden glow. The day light hours are getting longer. The Juncos are long gone and I get my yearly longing to put an order in to Murray McMurray hatchery for a batch of baby chicks. I got my interest in chickens back in the late forties when I would sneak into Parker Davis’s coop to get in out of the wind and cold. I would set there and watch them for hours. For some reason they fascinated me, and they still do. I am sure the other kids thought that it was eccentric behavior at best.   But oddball is probably a better term, as I had a lot of different interests than my peers. The old adage “rich people are eccentric, poor people are crazy” proves that I am not eccentric.

When I first moved to Virginia Avenue the Thibedeau’s had chickens, Rhode Island Reds roosters and on Sundays one would end up in the pot. We were real young then and it seemed like a one year thing as the roosters and the two sheds soon disappeared.  I do recall searching for bugs and worms for them and Victor claiming the dominate one as his own and sagaciously named him Big Red. I also recall chasing a rooster around the back yard and having David Burke come over later and tell me his mother and father where listening to Beethoven and having a big laugh about how my scrambling around was in time with the music.   So maybe my interest started sooner than I think. I often wonder how I can recall things like that which happened more than sixty-five years ago but cannot remember someone’s name fifteen minutes later.

The first birds I raised were Rhode Island Reds that I got from Hardy’s Hatchery which use to be on route 133 in Essex Mass.  I had made a coop out of scrap wood and old doors. It was ugly as hell but it served its purpose for a few years. The first batch was definitely a learning experience. Trial and error was how I learned. If any of you remember or have heard of Don Buddin who had recently finished a mediocre career as the Red Sox’s shortstop you would have seen that I made many more errors raising my chicks then he did playing shortstop. In fact compared to me he was a gold glover. Priscilla please feel free to correct my selective memory.

The first batch started out in a Scott toilet paper box in the backroom of the house. A drop cord with a 100 watt bulb for heat, a couple of saucers for food and water and eight chicks all females.    I actually picked them up at Hardy’s Hatchery the day they were sexing or culling the chicks. The method they were using was vent checking as these were purebred. They would gently put the pullets into small cartons and flip the cockerels over their shoulders into large tissue boxes. I never went back to Hardy Hatchery, mainly because I wanted to move on to Barred Rock hens, and other sex-linked types that Hardy’s did not breed. And I was not real happy with what I thought was a little inhumane treatment of the cockerels. As you can guess vent checking could be somewhat hit or miss according to the expertise of the sexer, and many customers would end up with a rooster or two when they thought they were getting all pullets.  After a couple of days it was plain to see that just a big box with no bedding and half assed feed and water stations was not very practical. So in all of my infinite wisdom I decided to move them to the basement. The reason I did not put them in the pit to begin with was that most springs it became somewhat fen like down there. On top of some First National wooden tonic cases and some scrap wood I put into another toilet paper box some wood shavings, a small water font and feeder that I purchased at the Agway on Wenham Street in Danvers. So back to the infinite wisdom part, I picked up the Scoot toilet paper box and headed for the cellar door. Needless to say with the soggy bottom the chicks and the dishes the bottom fell out as I was half way there. All the wet newspapers, mushy feed pellets, water and chicken shit on the living room floor. Chicks running everywhere and me slipping and sliding in hot pursuit thrilled Priscilla to no end. The chicks eventually made it out to their coop in the back yard and started laying eggs towards the end of August and were very productive until December when the winter weather slowed them down. They were pretty productive that spring and summer. One morning in the fall I found them all dead with their heads and crops missing. People said it was probably a dog.  I did not believe it than nor do I believe it now. It’s true that there was no leash law back then and it was not out of the ordinary to see dogs roaming around. In this day you see one and you think that somebody is having a fit wondering where it is. Back then I knew most of the neighborhood dogs and they knew me and for one of them to get into the coop with no visible means of entrance make no sense to me. But some kind of a weasel or raccoon could somehow do it. I still have the two rock eggs I bought to induce those girls to start laying and I think of those times when ever I see them. They looked realistic at the time. However for some odd reason a couple of years ago I decide to spray paint them a Greek blue as the orthodox and traditional Easters fell on the same day that year and (traditional is probably the wrong term, theology is not one of my strong suits) tuck them into an Easter basket. However they dried a very pretty robin’s egg blue. I am sure if I ever stuck them into a robin’s nest the poor mama robin would swoon.

The next batch of chickens were Plymouth Barred Rocks and to this day are my favorite breed. They are very docile, good looking stout birds and prolific layers. Their molting season seems to be shorter than other breeds. Their wattles and combs stand up well in the winter cold and the pecking order seems almost nonexistent, they appeared to be broody but were never put to the test because Brewster was not a resident of this flock. Somewhere tucked away are a bunch of blue ribbons these birds won at the Topsfield Fair. I have mixed emotions about entering my birds into the fair.  The second year, somebody had entered some sick birds needless to say all of the entrants were affected. When I brought my bird’s home they were soon all sick. I managed to get them through it but they were never as vibrant and as robust as they were prior to the fair. That plus the fact it was plain to see that the judging in all of the barns at the fair was odd to say the least. In the poultry barn it would not matter to the judge if the chicken they were testing quaked like a duck. The only thing that mattered to them was the name of the entrant as ribbons were secondary to best of show. So with the health of my birds a priority I decided to never enter a bird into any poultry show. But maybe someday I might submit a posy in a horticultural barn. The most outstanding memory of the fair was the last day of the show. I went there with my daughter Lisa who was about eight years old at the time. As I was loading the hens into the poultry carrying cages, one got nervous and jumped out of my hands and started to scamper all around the barn. The bystanders for some strange reason were as scared as that poor little hen and started acting just like her. The little hen going one way clucking like crazy, the people going in the other direction audibly scared, you would think the Tasmanian devil was running loose. Lisa three foot tall at most darted under the tables and deftly upended the hen and calmly carried the now docile bird back to its cage. The embarrassed sighs and sheepish looks of that throng were priceless. To this day I rue the fact that I do not have that little escapade on film.

I did not raise any chickens for quite awhile after that until I landed in Gilford New Hampshire. As an employee of Triple Trouble Farm I had as my residence a beautiful big house two acres of pasture and a perfect little barn. Triple Trouble Farm a rich man’s dabbling consisted of a beautifully landscaped estate. A picture perfect for show only nonworking farm about a mile away and a pick your own Blueberry and Raspberry operation on the side of a mountain next to the Gunstock ski area. And the previously mentioned caretaker’s house. Idyllic sounding indeed, but Triple Trouble turned out to be just what its name implied.  But for a few years doing the things I loved outweighed the bad. I managed to raise chickens, Turkey’s sheep a steer and do some gardening while I was there.  The barn was perfect for me as it was built for horses and had perfect chain link separated stalls.  In the summer George the steer stayed out in the pasture which I fenced off half for him, the other half for the sheep. In the barn I kept the chickens in one stall the turkeys in another.  The two empty stalls would be cleaned and waiting. Every two weeks I would rotate the birds into the empty stalls and then clean the other two. This way the birds were always in clean conditions. When winter came the lamb and turkeys went into the freezer and George went into the barn and became part of the two week rotation. I have pictures of Joe down in the barn dressed just like his Father. He loved going down there with me. In the photos he looked like he was going to grow up to be a shit kicker just like me.  Sadly the house and acreage was the only good thing about my Triple Trouble experience. I miss that barn and life style more and more every day.

My last aborted attempt to raise a few hens was in a little shed that I had under the elevated deck at my house in Salisbury Mass. I did not keep them for much more than a year because it was just too close to the house.  I was working as a dispatcher for Rayproof industries at that time. They had made a shed like structure for testing equipment for the stealth bomber. They decided it was not adequate for their purpose and were in the process of disposing of it when I rescued it to be my last chicken coop. I talked the owner of the truck company that we used to transport it for me. After putting on a new roof and door it was semi adequate for the hens. I ended up giving those chickens to a hippy like family in Amesbury Mass.

Finally after my tedious and wordy lament about my love affair with poultry, I get to the gist of this whole sad tale.  I said I regret living where I do. The house itself a humble mobile home suits me just fine. It is the yard and the shed that bother me when spring arrives. There are so many trees that it is really difficult to grow things that I really enjoy. I have become semi proficient at growing shade gardens. But it is not the same as all the wonderful things you can grow in the sun. But I figured I could adjust to that because with that beautiful two sectioned shed I can finally raise some chickens again. So with that trade off I made the move. Much to my dismay I found out to late that raising chicken in a utopia like Seabrook New Hampshire was a no no.  But in New Hampshire it is legal to carry a loaded concealed handgun. There are no laws on bulk purchases, ammunition regulations or magazine sizes. Background checks are not required nor administered when purchasing a firearm. Fingerprints, ballistic filing, and even safety provisions for children are neglected. But you want to raise six hens? What are you some kind of a deviant. So my neighbors can have snakes. Rats and attack dogs but I must refrain from raising socially unacceptable dangerous fowl. So every spring I give myself a mental kick in the ass for not checking this out beforehand. So I have to be content with my growing conditions and learn to live with the type of plants that like the shade. I refer to them as shady ladies. In retrospect that’s what I probably need, a shady lady!