My west coast brother has informed me that today is "National Backyard Day" and "National Poultry Day." That leads me to think about chickens in the back yard. In the 1930s and 40s it was not unusual to have chickens in your backyard. My first husband once confessed that his mother kept chickens when he was small and that's why he couldn't eat chicken. He saw them as pets while she saw them as dinner. There has been some revived interest in raising yard chickens in recent years, but happily, to me, the neighborhood covenants and restrictions where I live now forbid chickens in the backyard. If you wonder about my backyard fowl aversion let me explain. When I was in third grade my family sold their little house in New Haven and moved to five acres in the country to live the dream of "Five Acres and Independence" which also happened to be the name of a popular book of the time. As it happened, our five acres had, in addition to an old house and garage, two chicken coops. That's where chickens belong. Before you knew it, we were in the chicken business. 1500 delightful baby chicks delivered every three months, so cute for about a week, after which they evolved in twelve weeks into big smelly but very marketable fancy flock fryers. The best memories of those chicken years are the chickens we had butchered and kept for our own use. Fried chicken every Sunday in the cold months and my father's amazing barbequed chicken during the summer. Sweet convoluted memories.
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