The Chicken Farm Luncheonette and Other Stories

Reader Contribution by The Mother Earth News Editors
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This story is from Patricia Schick, submitted as part of our Wisdom From Our Elders collection of self-sufficient tales from yesteryear. Read the first part of her memories, Stories of Life on a Chicken Farm.  

My grandmother became a skillful homemaker when she and my grandfather moved to their chicken farm and homestead. She cooked and baked on a woodstove. She also canned and preserved, harvesting all she could of the vegetables they grew and the fruits and berries she and the children would pick. They grew potatoes and tomatoes, green beans and peas, carrots and onions, picked apples from their orchard, and scouted out all the wild berries they could find. They also bartered with other farmers for peaches and other things they did not grow themselves. All produce was canned or stored in burlap down in the dirt-floor cellar. During many winters, the family benefitted from her insistence that they “waste not; want not.”

They ate chicken in a thousand forms. My grandfather was known for the way he could kill a chicken using one hand — simply by snapping its neck in one quick move. He would say, “It’s the kindest way to do it.”

  • Published on Oct 18, 2011
Tagged with: Reader Contributions
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