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The Memories of Irene Whitfield Chisholm |
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In 1979, I gave my mother a hardcover blank book and asked her to please write down all the stories of her childhood that she'd been telling me. She claimed she couldn't think of which stories I could possibly want written down. So, I sat down and made a list. I gave her the list and then she gave up and started writing. She didn't write everything on the list, and she wrote a few things that weren't. But she wrote down things in more detail. At first, they were merely interesting. But now, more than fifteen years after her death, they are a treasure trove of history and family knowledge.
Both of my grandpas had chickens and cows, enough for their own use anyhow.
Grandpa Howe raised chickens commercially mainly for selling the eggs. Often six
or more huge crates at a time like big apple boxes. As I remember several huge buckets
full everyday.
He also hatched eggs for sale and raised hundreds of baby chicks every
year. In the summer the cockerels were killed and picked and sold to the Snoqualmie
Falls Lodge. They weighed about a pound and a quarter apiece. We sold a couple hundred
at a time.
We picked them by hand. It was some job! Uncle Bill tied them by the feet
to a clothes line and cut their throats on the inside. Then they were plunged into hot
water, then into cold, and were picked immediately. Our hands got all water logged and
wrinkly and felt awful, but it always went away again.
When I was in college he was
hatching thousands of baby chicks for sale. He had big hatching machines but it was
still quite a bit of work. Hot, hard work but they had to have a lot of watching and
turning, etc.
Grandpa Whitfield let the old hen raise the new crop of young ones. As he did
need only enough chickens for what eggs he needed and an occasional chicken dinner,
he could do it that way. Easy and efficient. They did sell the surplus eggs to
the neighbors who were not blessed with chickens. Like they also sold cream and butter
sometimes.
My Papa did not have chickens. I think he never did have either chickens or cows.
He was away a lot and he probably rightly figured they would not be taken care of.
Jack and I started having chickens sort of accidentally. It was a beautiful day and
we were outside digging holes for plants when up came Mr. Carmichal with a box under
his arm. He set it down and asked us if the kids would like some banty chickens and
I said, 'yes, I think so'. He turned the box over and out slid a little black hen
and a dozen fluffy babies. We named her Higgledy-Piggledy.
Someone else gave Rod a
pair of banties that summer. We named them Banny and Bapdad which is what Roddy called
his grandparents, and I figured that if he called his chickens that, they might decide
that Bapdad and Banny were not such cute names after all. They had fun encouraging him
to call them that and I knew he could say it correctly if he tried. He did.
I remember once Alice asked Roddy if Banny had laid any eggs, yet. 'No,' he says,
'We will have to get some for her.' We were having dinner and Alice nearly choked.
When Bonnie rose got big enough, she raised chickens for a 4H project. They were Red Hampshires. She took care of them and earned several blue ribbons at 4H fairs. They laid very well, though there were only a few of them. Somewhere around 12, I think. She sold some of them, besides what she sold us. One of them tried to set but we had to stop her. It was very hot weather and she would not even come down from the nest for a drink. Banties are better mothers. They always come off for exercise and food and have very successful hatches.
One day when I feeding some baby banties, and of course their parents, the rooster got excited and spurred me on the leg. That was shortly before we got rid of most of the banties. There were quite a lot of them by then, mostly roosters. The young roosters fought a lot.
NOTES:
I remember the incident where the rooster spurred her for getting too close to the baby chickens, and I also remember that I got to help pluck the rooster for supper. Not that I was much help at age four or five.
Once when a flock of them were feeding, a coyote walked through the middle of the
flock, picked up a young bird as he went and scarcely disturbed the flock at all.
They said 'tut tut' in a rather startled voice, but went right back to eating.
One time I came to the door just in time to see a coyote sneaking up on one of the
big brown hens. She was crossing the yard quite nonchalantly. She saw the coyote,
but seemed very much unaware of her danger. I had nothing to shoo the coyote with
and tried waving my apron at him. He backed off a little, but obviously hated to
leave his chicken dinner, especially as said chicken dinner shooed almost as much
as he did.
So I spent the next fifteen minutes (about) alternately calling the chicken
and shooing the coyote and the chicken. The poor biddy must have been quite confused
and I was afraid to leave in search of a better weapon. But eventually she achieved
safety. That is, she crossed the yard to such a point that I was between her and her
would-be assassin. Not that I could do anything about it anyway, but he didn't know
that and he left. I stuck around awhile just in case, but he did not come back.
Diary: Irene Margery Whitfield Chisholm
Photographer: Jack Chisholm
Author/artist/designer/programmer of page: Rowan Ainslie Chisholm
This website and all contents copyright 2009 Penelope Chisholm aka Rowan Ainslie Chisholm
This page first posted 8 May 2007.
Latest revision: 23 January 2011
