Grandma Mortensen always had chickens. She loved going and gathering the eggs and feeding them her table scraps. My Mom is the same way now. I think her chickens are her pride and joy. She doesn’t feed them any store bought food just a can grain , a little bit of hay and her table scraps. My mom tells me that her Grandma Burton always had chickens as well and that when Grandma Mortensen was about 12 yrs old she gave a demonstration for 4-H on how to butcher a chicken. She was always the pro when it came to butchering the chickens, my Mom couldn’t do it without her. An interesting thing they used when it came to butchering chickens is they would use an old cow dehorner to dehead the chickens. I’ll get a picture of that sometime.
Grandma Mortimer tells about chickens in her history, when she was about 5 years old and her sister Elma was about 3 years old. She says “My mother had some big buff hens which she was very proud of. One day Elma and I went into the chicken coop and caught a large hen that was setting on a nest. Elma took one of her legs and I the other. It was so heavy that one of us couldn’t carry it. Then we started toward the house carrying the hen between us. It was upside down and was so heavy that the head drug on the ground. When we were about to the house, being so proud that we had caught this hen and was taking it to mama, she saw us and hurried out and took the hen from us. I don’t know the reason why, but the hen was kind of limp by then. Mama tried to revive the hen by giving it some water, but it died. ( I felt so bad that I’ve remembered it for many years.) “
Grandma Mortimer also writes in her history:
I made aprons for Carol, Doris, Kathy, Orkell and Alice and an apron for my granddaughter Brittney, Gary’s daughter. I found this poem that I like about aprons:
Poem – Apron Applause
When I was a child, Grandma’s garments made little impressions on me – with exception of her apron! Since Grandma was a woman of ample proportions, her over- all apron was a big affair of dark printed cotton, slow to soil, edged all around with bias tape. It’s uses were limitless.
The apron made a “basket” when she gathered eggs from the hen house, late in the afternoon. If there were fluffy, yellow chicks to be carried to the back porch during the sudden cold spells, they made the trip peeping contentedly, in Grandma’s apron. When these same little darlings grew into hen-hood and liked to peck and scratch among Grandma’s flowers, she merely flapped her apron at them and they ran squawking to the chicken-yard. And I can see her yet, tossing cracked corn to the hungry flock from her apron.
Lots of chips and kindling were needed to start fires in the big ivory-colored cook stove in Grandma’s kitchen. Sure, she carried them in her apron. Vegetables and fruits too, lettuce, radishes, peas, string beans, carrots, apples, peaches – all found their way to the kitchen via Grandma’s carry – all! While things were cooking it was a handy holder for removing hot pans from the stove. If the men working in the field weren’t too far away, the apron waved aloft was the signal to “come to dinner.” At threshing or company time, when the long dining room table was crowed with hungry folk, Grandma hovered abut, passing aromatic dishes and flipping the big apron at pesky flies.
When grandchildren came to visit, the apron stood ready to dry childish tears, and to wipe their noses. If the little ones were a bit shy, it made a good hiding place in case a stranger appeared unexpectedly.
The apron was used countless times to stroke a perspiring brow as Grandma bent over the hot wood stove, or hoed the garden under a hot blistering sun. In chilly weather, Grandma wrapped the friendly apron around her arms while she hurried on an outside errand or lingered at the door with departing guests. Hastily, and a bit slyly, it dusted tables and chairs if company was sighted coming down the land. And, in the evening when the day’s work was done, Grandma shed garment of many uses and draped it over the canary’s cage.
Grandma prided in a fresh, crisp apron. When one was soiled, she always had a clean one to take it’s place. ———-Author Unknown —————————
I am so excited to start a blog of all sorts of things. I have learned so much over the years from Grandma Mortimer and Grandma Mortensen that it will take forever to share it. I have a pile of old recipes Grandma Mortimer cut out of newspapers that I can’t wait to try. Growing up next door to her she taught us how to write and read and so much more. Who knows what we will find as we continue cleaning up Grandma Mortensen’s home and quilt building. She was kind of a hoarder but we loved her anyways and it’s always a treasure hunt to see what we find.