Here chick, chick, chick
My earliest country memories center around baby chicks, hens in the chicken house, and gathering eggs.
It was like a perpetual Easter egg hunt to go into the dark and dusty chicken house in search of treasure. When I was little, however, I was afraid of those bossy old hens who didn't want to get off a clutch of eggs and could peck with fury at the childish hand that reached too close. I much preferred empty nests or those eggs surreptitiously hidden in a straw-filled corner.
At Grandma's house, my fascination veered toward the setting hens. Once Gramm had chosen the best hens for raising her next year's crop of chicks, woe be unto the hen that yearned for motherhood. As I recall, Gramm would come armed with an extra bucket of cold water and she'd douse a clucking hen good. "That'll bring her out of it," Grandma would mutter.
Whether it worked or not, I have no idea — I just knew that being housed in the empty granary with your own bushel basket full of eggs was a hen's high calling. Sometimes there were half a dozen such living incubators in the hatchery section of the farmyard.
How many weeks does it take to hatch a nest full of baby chicks? Only three? It seemed endless to me, as I awaited the first little peeps and pecks.
There is absolutely nothing sweeter than a nest full of little chicks with their solicitous mother leading them through another day in the country.
When I was long grown, with a little girl of my own, we visited my parents who were, by now, living on a little mini-farm in Oregon. Being a country girl at heart, of course, Mom had to have chickens — and one hen had been allowed the honor of hatching out a nest full of babies.
When it was time for us to go, Mom said to her little granddaughter, "Wouldn't you like to take that hen and all her chicks to California?"
I knew that Mom was thinking of me and my early fascination with chickens that I'd never outgrown, but she was offering them to my daughter. Who could refuse such a gesture? While my husband groaned, I made room in the trunk for the basket of precious country cargo.
At the time, carrying a hen and chicks 650 miles to California seemed ludicrous — especially when we tried to explain the contents of the basket to the border guards at the California state line. But who could put a price tag on the joy of watching the cycle of life spin around as another little girl watches the miracle of regeneration.
My Aunt Gertie reminded me of the days when baby chicks were mail ordered and came into the post office right along with the first class mail. "We'd go down to get the mail and you could hear the little chicks cheeping in the back room," she said with a smile. "It was always exciting when the chicks arrived — but people just don't raise chickens like they used to," she paused, "although someone still has chickens in Ramona — we can sometimes hear a rooster crow early in the morning."
Every once in a while, I'm hit by the nostalgia bug and I think now that I'm in the country I could get some chicks. We even have a couple of little chicken houses. How difficult could this be? "Maybe we need some chickens to help control the grasshoppers," I suggest to my sister, appealing to her expedient side as well as her love of the flowers.
She eyes me with that certain look — not unlike that beady-eyed stare of the hen who protects her nest from intruders — and I change the subject quickly to more practical matters.
There's an old saying that goes, "If your neighbor has a garden and you don't, cultivate your neighbor." For many years, my neighbor, Frances, had chickens and we still enjoyed farm-fresh country eggs. Now that her chickens are gone, our friend Paula calls and says, "Do you need any eggs?" We sure do!
— Pat Wick
