Spring and Baby Chicks

It's that time of year again. Farm stores advertise baby chicks and ducks and my heart longs to do it one more time. However, that one more time was about two years ago when we got about six bantam chickens. My grandson and I enjoyed caring for them and watching them develop from palm size to adult size. After caring for them two summers and a winter, we decided to give up farming.
My first remembrances of spring chicks were seeing a whole coop of them, a couple hundred, at my grandparents farm. When I was big enough to accompany my grandfather to the hatchery, he would take me along. The hatchery was owned by Al Melchert and his wife, Helen. In our small town, we usually knew the background of the people around but I don't recall knowing much about them. Grandpa and I piled covered cardboard boxes with airholes into the car and drove those little chicks the mile and a half home. There was such joy in holding those small yellow fur balls. Even their smell was delightful, at least for the first couple of days. That soon changed however. One of the things Grandpa fed the chickens was buttermilk. It came in a fifty gallon wooden barrel with a wooden lid. The buttermilk was in the form of a grey paste. As neighborhood kids, (our house was the next house down the road from my grandparents) it was our habit to sneak into the chicken coop and poke our finger into the paste and eat it. We would get caught if we didn't replace the top securely. Nice midmorning snack then but now I could vomit just to think of it. The chickens grew and when they had gotten to be fat adults, I had to help gather the eggs. Grandpa taught me to reach under the warm belly of a hen and take away her egg. I felt a bit guilty when I thought of the hen but I got over it. Worse than stealing eggs was the happenings of Saturdays. It was a family (cultural) custom to have a big Sunday noon meal after returning from church. We called it Sunday dinner. Grandpa had a wooden handled wire with an end that had a hook bent into it. He would survey his choice of hens and finding the fattest, he grabbed the foot of the poor thing and that was close to her end. Out side and with her head on a stump, Grandpa did the dastardly thing. Off went her head with one swipe of his small axe. He then flung the headless body into the grass where it jerked and bleed until all life had ebbed away. After that the body was dipped in boiling water and the feathers were plucked, the innards removed and she was ready for roasting. In the world we live today, we rarely see what has to happen to the animal before it is placed on the table for consumption. It all seems so brutal to me now. Then it was a way of life and I must admit that I loved Grandma's roasted chicken. Twas the best. More about chicks and chickens tomorrow..