In 1938, when she was only 17, my mother left
her family's Brooklyn home for the wilds of Long Island's
North Shore, to help her older brother manage a small chicken farm.
During those years, my Mom met my Dad, and the rest -- as they say -- was history.
But Mom never lost her love for chickens.
We four kids grew up steeped in chicken lore. We understood about candling eggs, what a blood spot meant, and how a chicken can drown by sitting in a puddle. That hens will peck one of their own to death if they smell blood on her, and that the way to get a mama to adopt a motherless chick is to touch both her own chicks and the orphan with a drop of iodine, so they all smell the same.
We also knew what really happens when a chicken's head is chopped off.
The other day I roasted a couple of cut-up chickens, and I thought of my Mom, because when she'd unwrap a cut-up bird from the market she'd invariably cluck her tongue and remark, "These parts are not from the same hen! Nothing matches!"
My husband Howard likes that story.
One of the few reminders of the chicken farm that my Mom kept was her wire egg basket.
I asked for it when I was in my early 20s, and Mom gave it to me. I painted it white.
Turned out Mom hadn't wanted me to paint it, and she took it back.
Oops.
Oops.
And now I've got it again. I'll leave it in its now-old white paint.
It will go back to work as a magazine holder.
It mostly held knitting books and needlework magazines when Mom used it.
I'm not much of a knitter anymore, but I love this old wire basket and I've got more magazines than any sane woman should have,
and I'm sure they will be very happy to live out their useful days in an old egg basket.
Even if it is painted.
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Meanwhile, speaking of new life (I did mention baby chicks) --
look what is poking through the dirt at That Old House:
Shoots!
Sprouts!
It's almost Spring. Sing Hallelujah. -- Cass
For other happy signs of Winter's winding-down, visit Outdoor Wednesday at
A Southern Daydreamer blog. Susan has trees in bloom! Click here!
Note: All images not from my own camera are
in the public domain or used with permission.
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