Rick Houser
As I have said I was raised in a family that farmed. We raised lots of tobacco, corn, wheat, hay and livestock. But unlike a lot of farmers my dad felt a family farm meant just that.

Each of us was allotted a crop of tobacco and we all then had to work as a crew caring for the crops as if all proceeds were ours. Dad felt we all would feel a deeper involvement in the entire process. In other words we couldn’t quit until it all was completed.

Peg never really got any deeper than the tobacco but did help the rest of us in ways she felt comfortable at. Ben raised a large portion of tobacco and he and I partnered in raising some hogs and a few cattle. From time to time we farmed together but farming was never his final goal in life. But as for me I thought I was going to farm from my earliest accounts of growing up.

About the time I was in the sixth grade I decided that raising some tobacco was what we all were doing and Ben was sporadic to investing in new projects. I however was bursting to begin a new project. But doing what?

When you are 12 your options and bankroll are very limited. After a good while of thinking about this I hit upon a product that our farm at that time didn’t have. No chickens were in our hen house! What is a farm without chickens or eggs?

So I went and presented my great idea to my dad. He showed very little interest. He offered me the use of the chicken lot and hen house rent free but that was as far as his interest went. My sister Peg when approached made and awful face and said”Chicken? Yuck!”. Ben who had been flailed by a rooster when little hated chickens so much that he refused to have anything to do with them including eating them wasn’t even an option.. I had one las chance at an investor and that was my mom. When ask mom thought for a moment and said yes she would go 50/50 with me. She would go half the cost as long as I did all the labor and handle all the responsibilities. An investor and me have total charge? This was better than I thought.

So in the early spring we went to the hatchery over near Williamsburg and purchased 100 leghorn baby chicks. We got out the old incubator and feeders and waterers and I was shown how to set up the operation and then my parents stepped back and let me take charge. The chicken house and lot became my turf and my responsibility. Time seemed to pass quickly and the cute little chicks grew into good sized, healthy white feathered chickens. What happened next took me way off guard. One morning mom and dad had the truck and a few chicken coops and proceeded to load 50 of the chickens and they were taken to the slaughter house. I confronted my mom as to why she was doing this and she explained she had followed through on her obligations and she was now taking her half. Shocked and appalled I tried to shame her into slaughtering half of the investment reduced the number of hens to lay eggs by half. Also it wasn’t right to kill these chickens as I had raised them from babies to adults. My pleas however fell on deaf ears and off to processing they went.

In a couple weeks and two Sunday dinners of Fried Chicken I began to accept what had transpired and moved on. The hens began to lay eggs and we contacted a man at Amelia who stopped weekly and bought the eggs. Money began arriving evert Thursday and I began logging the income against the expenses and could see some gain. Then cold weather arrived and that was when I learned chickens do what is called molt in cold weather. Bottom line they stop laying eggs. So for a couple of months I didn’t see much of the egg man or income. But eventually spring arrived and production returned and so did that nice egg man and his checks. But in the summer another tragedy occurred. One morning the neighbor’s young bird dog got into the chicken lot and did what instinct told him. Before we could get to him he had killed 18 of my hens. Sad and angry I was beside myself other than to bury the deceased I was lost. Then my dad explained to me that the township trustees paid farmers for the loss of animals when this happened. So I got paid 1.39 per hen. (Probably the best money I made on the entire investment.)

For the next couple years I gathered the egg from the survivors and what I gathered I sold to that friendly egg man with the pretty green checks. But as the years passed age kept up on the hens and it seemed that one by one they faded from the chicken lot. I would count them in the hen house but in a month it seemed another was gone. Now in those days the scraps from meal preparations were taken to the chicken lot and tossed to the chickens. One day and I don’t really know why I noticed but I realized that all the chickens were gone and all I could think was we were just feeding the chicken gods. This became the end to my first business I was in charge of. Two things come to mind when this subject comes up. Were there really chicken gods and my mom could fry up some of the best chicken you ever tasted!

Rick Houser grew up on a farm near Moscow in Clermont County and loves to share stories about his youth and other topics. He may be reached at houser734@yahoo.com.