In the 1920s, my great-grandmother decided that the hustle and bustle of Wilkes-Barre, Penn., was unsuitable for raising small children, so she persuaded my great-grandfather to buy a piece of land in the country and take up small-scale farming. Very small scale. Born and raised in Wilkes-Barre, they were dilettantes to be sure. But they stuck with rural life and it carried them through some tough times.
Wilkes-Barre is not a major metropolis today, but at the turn of the century it was at the center of northeastern Pennsylvania's booming coal mining industry. Coal mining was miserable, dangerous work, and the low-lying city was crowded and prone to flooding. Still, they were city people, both educated, and their decision to move out to the sticks and buy cows struck some of their friends as a little odd. My great-grandfather kept his job in the office at the colliery while my great-grandmother set about procuring a small number of purebred cows and chickens, plotting out rows of corn and planting apple trees on the modest piece of land our family would come to call "the farm."
They never had much money, but a decade or so later, when the Great Depression came, things got harder. Great-Grandpa somehow managed to hold on to his job at the mine, but his wages were cut by half and then halved again. As a younger man he had studied piano at the New England Conservatory, so he earned a
little extra money teaching piano lessons on the side. But it was really the farm that carried them through, providing enough eggs, meat, fruit and vegetables for them and much of the extended family to live on.
Long after the Depression, even after Great-Grandpa retired from the mine, they kept one or two cows and a handful of chickens. My aunts and uncles still tell wide-eyed stories of watching chickens meet the axe on a stump near the barn. My grandmother moved away after college to take a job at the War Department in Washington, where she met my grandfather. They brought up their seven kids in a series of sterile, 1950s suburbs, and for my mom and her siblings, holidays at the farm were a big (and sometimes terrifying) treat.
I thought of my great-grandparents and their purebred chickens today because I saw a flyer advertising a workshop called "Pastured Poultry: From Backyard to Production." The workshop, held this Saturday at Tesuque Pueblo Farm, will be led by Tom Delehanty. Delehanty is the owner of Pollo Real, a certified organic pastured poultry farm in Socorro. You might recognize the name from the Farmer's Market (where he sells chicken, eggs and produce), local grocery stores or restaurants. If you've ever considered raising a few hens just for eggs, this is your opportunity to find out one way to do it.
"A lot of people are intent on having a nice little hand-built chicken coop," Delehanty says, "but I think portability can be good." He's talking about the system he and many other organic poultry farmers use. The birds are kept in open pens or low enclosures that are open to the grass. Moving the pens over a pasture ensures a steady supply of natural grains and insects for the hens and a steady supply of chicken poop to fertilize the pasture. This is the way most chickens were raised until the advent of giant chicken barns in the 1950s.
Can you do this in your back yard? Sure you can (although neighborhood covenants and city rules may limit what kind and how many animals you can keep). "It would benefit everything in the back yard," Delehanty says. "Everybody should have a few chickens!" Your neighbors might raise an eyebrow at the clucking, but they'll probably come around when you offer them a dozen fresh eggs. In their prime, Delehanty says, hens will lay about an egg a day. They start laying smallish eggs when they're about six months old, depending on the breed, and then increase in egg size and frequency. Laying hens do slow down in the winter, simply because it's darker. "Light matters a lot to chickens," he explains, suggesting that a light bulb on a timer will help to keep them laying regularly. (That's the kind of neat little tip you can expect to pick up out at the Tesuque Pueblo Farm on Saturday.)
Hens lay eggs regularly until they're 4, 5, even 6 years old. "And then what," I asked him, "they become
coq au vin
?" He laughed, imagining how tough an older bird would be. But
coq au vin
was invented for tough old birds! Not that I have any 6-year-old hens to stew. But if I did, I know who could teach me how to take care of the steps in between clucking and cooking. On Nov. 18, Delehanty will teach a three-hour class called "Turkey Harvest." Held at Ecoversity, students will learn how to butcher, defeather and eviscerate a bird. It'll be like all those
Foxfire
books you read, but live and in person!
Pastured Poultry: From Backyard to Production
Tesuque Pueblo Farm, 955-7723
Saturday, Sept. 16, 2-5 pm
Cost: $20
Turkey Harvest
Ecoversity, 424-9797,
Saturday, Nov. 18, 9 am-noon
Cost: $30
Tell me where to eat! I need your input. Send all of your tips, gripes and raves to
.
