Friday, October 15, 2010

I-search BACKROUND

 
 
BACKROUND
As a small child I can remember my grandparents having farm animals. Chickens and a couple of horses as I recall. This was interesting because they lived in a suburb of Boston not really out in the country. This was interesting to me because we only would visit a couple of times a year and it was a great treat to see the animals. My grandfather had a chicken coop in the barn. My brother and I would play in the barn and my grandfather would yell at us not to upset the chickens. I was small and didn't understand what he meant about upsetting the chickens. As I recall the coop was only four of five small cages, with two or three chickens in each of them, in the back of the barn that were open on the bottom to the outside. I cannot remember what kind of chickens the were or if they lay eggs or not, but that they seemed very aggressive and nasty. There was and amazing stench coming from the manure pile under the coop. I can remember my grandmother saying she was going out to get dinner once and watching her walk to the barn. She was gone for quite a while and we were not allowed to go outside or near the barn. Some time later I remember her walking in the back door carrying a brown paper bag and she had feathers on her apron. I was confused why she didn't leave to go get dinner, and what was in the bag. She never even got into her car. It was fried chicken for dinner that night. Later I remember visiting and my Aunt, who lived with my grandparents, had build a larger coop outside that had a large open area in it and she had many more chickens. I was always intimidated by the chickens and the way they would go crazy when we would come around. They would make a lot of noise and fly around the coop. That was my only real interaction with chickens for the majority of my life. Growing up we only had house pets and never any birds. As an adult I can recall only one other experience with like this while invited to dinner at my then girlfriend, now wife's, grandparents house. We had a whole roasted chicken served up just like Thanksgiving. All the trimmings and was the best chicken I had ever had. I had never had a whole roasted chicken at my house growing up. Never. It was fantastic and I still remember what a how much I enjoyed the novelty of it. My wife, then girlfriend, said that the chicken came from out back, that her grandparents had always had a couple of them around. It didn't dawn on me until the drive home that that chicken had been walking around that morning. Now, I have four chickens living in my back yard. We bought them last spring with the idea the they would wander around the yard eating ticks, fleas and bugs in the garden. I had no prior knowledge of raising chickens, and all of a sudden I had four little yellow fuzz balls living in a box in the dinning room.

1 comment:

  1. Break into shorter grafs, please.

    Looks good.

    What suburb did your grandparents live in?

    Are yours eating chickens or laying birds--makes a difference in how you deal with them longterm.

    ReplyDelete