Wilmes -- Chasing after ducks, geese and dreams

Tag : poultry setters


After Dad retired from farming, a friend asked him to join acorn-shelling crew. Shelling cribbed corn was young men's work andthe dust and rodents made it even more demanding.

It wasn't likely that he received more than $3 an hour for hiswork, but the money was far less important than the enjoyment hegot working on the crew.

Ma -- beyond reasonable doubt -- would have liked him to be at hometo help her in the garden. After all, weeds were a constantstruggle in the huge strawberry patch. Raspberry bushes needed tobe trimmed and the leaky fence that allowed roaming chickens tocrawl through needed to be bird-proofed. However, he made her agate made from corn-crib lathes, which she deeply appreciated.

It was difficult to convince their youngest son to pickstrawberries with her. Looking back, I wish more time had beenspent in her garden.

In early May, her attention also turned to her geese and ducks. Thehens had been laying eggs randomly on the ground off-and-on sincespring thaw. The hens would soon nest, and she wanted to knowwhere. It was up to me to find out. I liked the detective work andusually found the half-dozen or more nests scattered in the barnand sheds.

It was also my job to make sure the ducks didn't waddle off to thepasture's creek. The creek -- lazy and shallow in summer -- randeep and loud and lured many a duck away in spring and earlysummer. We would catch the hens and clip feathers from one wing sothey couldn't fly. That made it easier to track them down and bringthem back. Skunks and raccoons were fond of eggs, and mink couldsuck the life from a hen.

Sometimes, the family dog was to blame. A mutt that had been raisedfrom a puppy turned out to be an egg-eater. Ma recalled that hermother had once successfully stopped a dog from eating eggs bymaking a small hole in an egg and filling it with black pepper. Thepepper experiment failed, but Ma took pity on the dog.

She wasn't so forgiving if a dog took to killing chickens. However,even then an effort was made to teach the canine criminal no toattack chickens. She recalled that years ago her Dad had a tied adead chicken around the killer's neck and kept it there an entireday. She seemed to recall that the treatment worked, but wasn't 100percent certain.

We tried the cure without success. A dog that killed chickens wasuseless and too costly to keep. Dad's shotgun put an end to it.Although she knew it had to be done, Ma was nervous while shewaited for the gun's roar.

When the ducklings hatched, they were put in a portable pen on thelawn. What was considered expensive duck feed was purchased at thecooperative. The pen was moved to fresh grass a couple times aweek, until the ducklings grew their final feathers.

Her geese weren't always good egg sitters. For that reason, Mawatched for setting chicken hens. A small bandy might cover threeor four goose eggs and a Leghorn one or two more. The settingchickens were kept in the smokehouse, which was unused in springand summer. When they hatched, Ma carried the goslings in her apronfrom the smokehouse so they could be extra warm in the house for awhile.

The volunteer chicken setters' had done their jobs well. Theirreward was to spend a summer dusting themselves in the soft dirt.Our reward was poultry to sell and down-filled pillows.