Chickens anyone?

Possum Living

One of the greatest books I have ever read on survival, really was not intended to be a survival manual. The book is entitled, Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money, written by, then (1978), eight-teen year old, Dolly Freed. (you can find it very inexpensively online). My copy of the book, is old, yellow, with dog-eared, high-lighted and underlined pages. Briefly, it is the true story of a young girl and her father, who literally make a living using just their basic skills and land they OWN. I won’t go into a lot of detail here, since it would ruin your reading of the book, which I would not want to do. If you’re thinking you don’t have time to sit down and read another book….let me just say…it’s a quick and easy read (I read it in 1 night) and it will make you laugh out loud and it will make you think to yourself: If they can do it, I can do it!!!.

As a matter of fact, when I read it, I was thinking that her growing up years were really not that different than mine and we would be about the same age. Like Dolly, our family raised meat rabbits. We also had what I would describe as a working farm…where everything had a purpose and everyone in the family played a key role in making it all work.

The chickens on the farm were always my favorite. (along with horses, but that’s a whole ‘nother chapter) My parents used to say I hypnotized the chickens. I can remember the summer I was eleven, my dad had hatched out a bunch of bantam hens…and to anyone else the six of them all looked the same. They were the same breed, about the same size, and to anyone not prone to studying chickens, they were identical. To everyone, but me, that is. I would sit in the barn with my favorite, “Albert” (should have been Alberta, but, hey, I was eleven) on my lap for hours, and pet her fine feathers. Many times we’d both fall asleep, and my dad would say later, I had been hypnotizing chickens again!

Chickens used to be a farm staple. It was hard to find a working farm and family without at least a few chickens. Most of the time, these chickens just roamed around the barn yard and scratched and pecked for food, and would get an occasional handful of cracked corned tossed their way. They were low maintenance, always nested or roosted in the same spot each evening, laid eggs in the warmer months, and were an important contributor to meal time at the farm….you know, back when life was simple…..

If you’ve never had the opportunity to watch a mom hen with her chick as it emerges from the shell, you’ve missed one of life’s simple pleasures.

Owning and keeping chickens in this day and time, is a bit of a challenge, unless, like Dolly, or my parents, you have acreage where your flock can roam free and not be eaten by predators who have been squeezed out of their native hunting ground by the subdivision that just went in, where they used to hunt and catch their prey.

If you are thinking about raising chickens, I don’t want this to come across as discouraging. I want this to depict reality, because as we all know, this is not yester-year.