Stories of Life on a Chicken Farm

Reader Contribution by The Mother Earth News Editors
article image

This is part one of a selection of family stories from Patricia Schick, submitted as part of our Wisdom From Our Elders collection of self-sufficient tales from yesteryear.

My maternal grandparents, George and Ada Boudman, were born in the early 1890’s in Pennsylvania. They were married in 1912, and soon after my grandfather took a job as Director of the YMCA in Harrisburg, PA where the young couple began their family. After a couple of years, however, they decided to move back to their rural roots where they bought some acreage in Northumberland County, PA about a mile outside of a small town in central Pennsylvania. It became a dream come true as they raised their four children (my mother Florence being the eldest) and up to 10,000 chickens, in some years, on their well-maintained chicken farm.

As a couple they were tightly bound together, even with their very different personalities. They worked out their independent roles and, as my mother remembered, always had time for “us kids” – her father being the more affectionate of the two. Her mother’s even temperament, though, kept the four siblings in line as they did chores and attended the one-room school just down the road. One family story showed my grandfather’s temper as a young man. He and the family’s Model T Ford had an “off-on” relationship. One morning as the family was getting ready to go to town he was getting frustrated with cranking the thing and finally gave out a growling yell and threw the crank. It ended up stuck to the second story of the house just inches away from a bedroom window. After that my mother said she saw less and less of her father’s outbursts. She had a feeling that her parents talked over this event and decided it did not do anyone any good to see such behavior. And that was the end of that.

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368