Mother's Down-Home Country Lore

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Here's another fine batch of tips and hints from down-to-earth folks all over MOTHER land. And here are answers to the questions I get asked most often:

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by NANCY BUBEL

"You'll always have plenty of grit for your hens," say Gary and Ruth Magee of Clarks Mills, Pennsylvania, "it you've saved all your broken china, porcelain, and pottery. Just collect the shards in a burlap bag, whack the bundle forcibly against a hard surface, and then smash the resulting crockery chips into fine grit with a hammer." Gary reports that his grandmother used this trick before commercial grit had even been invented. (if you're low on broken dishes, the Magees add, you might try visiting local potters. They frequently discard imperfect pieces.) One potter that Ruth consulted assured her that the practice of making grit from crockery poses no danger of lead poisoning to the birds. (As you know, grit isn't chicken food... just a mechanical aid to digestion.)

Tired of waiting each year for parsley (that notoriously slow germinator) to come up? Mrs. Earl Crist of Hagerstown, Maryland suggests that after you sow the tiny seeds you [1] pat a light covering of fine soil over the row, then 121 sprinkle boiling hot water all the way down the furrow with a watering can. (After trying it myself, I can report that this is The Best Method I've found yet to make parsley sprout before you've forgotten where you planted it.—Nancy.)