If I have learned anything from hearing and preparing Dad’s stories for this blog it is how precious food sources were in the 1930s . The Lynn Tatro family kept a large garden where they grew among other things, lima beans. Dad talks about growing and eating lots of beans. For years I thought he meant green or yellow beans like I grew up eating. It wasn’t till recently that I realized that he was talking about some other type of bean. It took some time for the two of us to it figure out, but, with the help of Google, we figured out that he meant lima beans. Now I understand what he meant about taking mashed bean sandwiches for school lunches. Pancakes were a common breakfast, and it was pancakes that Grandma fed to “Hobos” that came, looking for work and a meal. There wasn’t a lot else to give them. And they kept chickens.

Chickens not only provided eggs and meat for the table but also were a source of money for things the family needed. Grandma walked down to the highway and caught a ride to town and sold eggs to housewives. She also had regular customers for fresh butchered chickens. Granddad Lynn had made her a wooden case to carry the chickens to her customers. Dad remembers that it was black, probably made from orange crate wood, and had a handle. It was about 8” by 24” and had compartments for 6 or 8 fresh butchered chickens.

Butchering, both for family meals and Grandma’s customers, was a major activity on the farm. Granddad Lynn killed the chickens and Grandma and the girls dipped them into hot water and took care of the messy job of removing the feathers. Dad says that he sometimes helped with that but mostly his job was what came next. His description of this gross job both fascinated and disgusted me. If you, dear reader, have ever cleaned a chicken it might seem normal but my only memory of the process is from a time I was likely no older than 5 and even then, it seems to me was grossly fascinating. Anyway, because his hands were a little smaller than the adults he could make a smaller cut in the chicken to remove the innards. He remembers that the customer’s like there chicken to be less “mutilated”. After making the cut he would put his hand in and pull out what was inside: liver, gizzard, lungs etc. If he came across any unlaid eggs he would set them aside. OK, so here I had to stop him. Unlaid eggs? Yes, he said. You really, only want to butcher the young male chickens, keeping the laying hens for eggs of course. But, occasionally, a mistake was made, and a laying hen got killed. “What does an unlaid egg look like?” I asked. I long lesson followed but the short story is that it depends on at what stage of development the egg had gotten to when the hen was killed. Only the ones that actually look like an egg as we know it would be saved. Sometimes they had a shell, usually still soft and rubbery, sometimes only a thin membrane and sometimes looked almost like an egg after being cracked out of its shell. My next question was “so, if you kept them, what did you do with them?” I thought I knew what the answer was and wasn’t sure if I was grossed out or not. Yep, you guessed it too. They would be scrambled for the next meal.

So now we can all see the value of chickens on the farm; meat, eggs and income. It follows that they must be protected from predators. Hawks and skunks, but weasels were the worst. They were small and could get in at the chickens through very small holes. “One time we had trouble with a hawk stealing chickens”, he told me. “It had nested and raised a family for years in the nearby ravine. Mostly we enjoyed having the hawk family close by and only worried about them when they came hunting around the yard. One time Dad saw that hawk coming and grabbed his twelve-gauge shot gun. The hawk swooped down and picked up a half-grown chicken and lifted it into the air. Dad shouldered his shotgun and fired. The chicken dropped to the ground dead as a doornail and the hawk flew away.”

I like to think that he then went and found the dead chicken, butchered it and Grandma cooked it for dinner, but Dad says he can’t remember that.