“I had an old hen she had a wooden foot/She made her nest by a mulberry root/Laid more eggs than any hen around the farm/A whole wooden leg wouldn’t do her any harm.”
—“Cluck Ol’ Hen”
The pounding autumn rains that followed this summer’s fires scoured the topsoil of centuries from the sides of the peaks. The bare bedrock gleaming bone white between the trees was a grim forerunner of the hard freezes that have finally claimed the pole beans and Cherokee purple tomatoes in Sue’s garden. We’ve diverted the hens from their run into this wasted Eden. They’ve made short shrift of the still green parsley and the frost netting wasn’t much protection for the chard and spinach.
We are enjoying an unseasonal day in the mid-sixties. While we wait for a friend to arrive we harvest the last of the beets and the carrots. The chickens gather at Sue’s feet and regard her with bright eyes. The hens have completed their molting and the Plymouth Barred- rocks are lovely in their new checkered black and white plumage. They vie for the bits of green leaves she discards.
It’s been a few weeks since there wasn’t enough green stuff in the yard to warrant our practice of turning them out for a couple of hours each evening before sunset. They always began with the drainage field of the septic system where precious moisture supported a stand of man high wild lettuce and amaranth and a dense coyote gourd vine. After harrowing this rich area for ten minutes they would scatter across the yard and reconvene at the roost when the sun went behind Old Caves Crater.
She was propping open the garden gate just as our expected friend’s truck rolled to a stop beneath the ancient pines by the septic tank. Look! He brought his two dogs, a pit bull and a retriever mix. They leaned over the open truck bed and strained at their leashes as the fifteen hens and one bantam rooster beeline toward them. The dogs trembled like a tea pot on roiling boil as their master cautioned them. “They’re pretty well behaved,” he said … They were as good as his word.
In 1972 I stayed with my brother Sam in Elkins, West Virginia while I studied guitar construction with Paul Reisler at Augusta Heritage Workshops at Davis Elkins College. Sam had a few acres of woodland several miles outside of town. You turned off the paved road onto an old logging road and a few hundred yards brought you to a cool green shaded clearing where he had built a storage shed to keep a few tools and a sack of feed for his flock of chickens. They roosted in the trees and would come running when you pulled up for the hands full of scattered corn.
Wild turkey season was in full swing at this time and the woods were full of gunmen. When Sam made his periodic check on his little woodland flock his chickens did not greet him. As he looked around the clearing he found plenty of forensic evidence; fresh car tracks, several discharged shotgun shells, blood splatters and tufts of chicken feathers. Sam just shook his head.
A few days later my friend Nowell who taught economics at the college was relating to me a strange story about a student from New Jersey. He told the class he had gone turkey hunting for the first time and had incredible luck. Up before daylight he had traveled deep into the forest. He had no more than left the safety of his car when a pack of ravenous turkeys charged him! He was able to kill them all with his trusty shotgun. He was cleaning his prey on the dorm floor when the cleaning lady told him “Honey them ain’t turkeys, them’s some farmer’s chickens.”
I told Nowell about Sam’s poached chickens and it didn’t take us too long to put all the pieces together. Playful fellow that he was Nowell said he would take care of it. He told his student “Those chickens belonged to an old farmer who is crazy. He’s likely to kill you. You don’t mess with these hill people.”
Nowell reported he was properly chastised. It wasn’t until weeks later that he reported that the kid dropped out of school and moved back to New Jersey.
