Farm Work

Living on the farm we had a lot of chores to do as there more than one or two persons could handle. I know that quite a few of you lived in either the city or in a town or village and perhaps didn't have a whole lot of chores. 

One such chore that fell on my shoulders was cleaning out the chicken house. Every Saturday I had to clean that pesky old chicken house or the hen house as my mother used to call it. The chickens cackled and fluttered and made a wild dash for the outdoors. Our chickens were what they would now a days call free range chickens. Well in those younger years of mine, it was only natural that chickens be outside, feeding themselves with what ever they could find. At night we chased them all inside to keep them from any predators that might be slinking around. It was done so often, those chickens knew what to do and where to go. Brown eggs were a norm on the farm. Dark egg yokes were frequent and when that happened, we knew the hen had been outside eating the grass.

Chickens are cannibals, they will eat anything, their just like goats in a way, if they can eat it they will. Chickens will eat other chickens if left to their own devices. Mom and Dad used to buy a lot of oyster shells for them to keep the egg shells hard, if the shells were soft, it simply meant the chickens were not getting enough calcium.

During the day chicken hawks, (as we used to call them) frequented the barn yard. Quite often when we went out to the barn yard, there would be a hawk or two flying around. Every once in a while, as I was cleaning that stinky old hen house, one would try and enter into the building, pesky things they were.

Chicken manure is worse than cow or pig as far as I am concerned. The ammonia is much stronger and besides that, there were little tiny red mites that you had to be careful of. It seemed that these mites were quite common with chickens. Mom or Dad would spray the chicken house every once in a while to kill those mites.  Scrape, shovel and load on the wheel barrow, carry it over to where ever it was that I was suppose to take it, sometimes there were six or seven loads to take. Not an easy job. Today it would poop me out with the shovelling, never mind pushing the wheelbarrow.

There were roosters among those chickens, and I loved to tease them. Along with the roosters, there were ganders, drakes and goats. With time on our hands, mine in particular, I would try and imitate these creatures. I actually didn't do to bad in that area as those poor creatures used to chase me around the farm yard when I did it. Every so often though they would get the best of me. In that event, up onto the top of what was called the tractor shed I would scramble out of there angry clutches. My mother had to rescue me a number of times from up there. If she only knew why I was up there in the first place she would have probably told me to stay up there as it was my own fault and figure out how to get down or give me a "talking to" as she would have put it.

Now that billy goat was another matter, he didn't like me milking the nanny goat and I didn't like milking her either. Have you ever tried to milk a nanny goat? You had to milk her from her rear, not from the side. It was actually real funny to watch mother milk her  Mother usually did the milking as that old goat never bothered her. (You had to know my mother) It got where Mother had to milk the nanny because when that old billy goat saw any of us kids try to milk her he got quite upset, which is where we landed trying to get away from him. I don't even remember why we had goats in the first place.

I loved teasing the chickens, I would softly cluck at them when picking the eggs and those hens would  answer back.

There was a trick to gathering eggs, you had to move slow, be gentle and talk quietly. Hens don't like noise or sudden movements. You slid your hand underneath the chicken from behind to get the eggs. If you did it from any other direction or did it fast she became quite upset. If the chicken started clucking, (her clucking was different from normal tones ) you knew she was sitting on a clutch of eggs getting ready to hatch them. She was then called a brooder. hatching her own eggs. Once in a while you saw that old rooster strutting his stuff and you knew a poor hen would be getting hit on. That hen usually became a brooder.

Now as I mentioned there were other creatures on the farm and that old gander really didn't like me at all. He took quite an offence with me trying to imitate him. So between the rooster, the goat and the gander, guess where I was quite a bit of the time. Yup, on the tractor shed roof. Let me tell you a bite from the gander hurts worse than a peck from the rooster.

We all learned how to make our chores fun and we would make games up to see who could finish first or make other games of the chores. I think back to those days and at times, wish I had the freedom I had then. I can certainly attest to that fact, even though I complained, bitterly at times, of the chores that we kids had to do. Really, in the long run, it didn't hurt us one bit. It taught us responsibility.