“Chickens and Cherries” – Dorothy’s Place
There is a lady in town named Margaret who, I’ve learned, is a regular reader of “Dorothy’s Place.” She sent me a note and a clipping from her hometown newspaper. She said she thought I might find it interesting and maybe I could use it for a column.
Margaret was right. I found it interesting and I will use some of the information. The article was based on a woman’s memories of her life in the 1930s, during the Great Depression.
She told how she and her husband nearly lost their car for the lack of $15 to make the final payment. She told about how neighbors helped one another, and how people often got paid for their labors with products or food instead of money.
My favorite was her story of the chickens and the cherries. Her husband did some work for a nearby farmer and was paid with 12 baby Plymouth Rock chickens. The chickens became one of their prize possessions, supplying them with all the eggs they needed plus a few extra for selling or sharing with neighbors.
One day she decided to make a cherry pie, so she went to the basement to get a quart of her home-canned cherries. The first jar she picked up had a bulging lid and juice was running down the side.
“Uh-oh,” she thought. “Food for the chickens.” She went out and scattered them in the chicken yard. The chickens fought over them and ate them eagerly.
She then retrieved a good quart and finally got a pie in the oven. While it was baking, she went to the garden to pick some fresh vegetables. To her horror she noticed all of the chickens lying flat on the ground.
She wondered how in the world she could ever tell her husband that she had poisoned the chickens. She fretted until about an hour before his expected homecoming. She still didn’t know how to tell him, so decided she would carry them into the coop, out of sight.
When she got to the chicken yard, she was overjoyed to see some of them moving, trying to get up. They would stand up, flutter their wings a little, take a few steps, and fall down again.
She realized what had happened. Because the cherries were fermented, the chickens had gotten so drunk that they had passed out. The chickens were acting so weird and making such strange sound that it brought the neighbors out. She says, “I have never heard sounds like those from chickens before or since.”
It was easier for her to tell her husband about alcoholic chickens than dead ones. And, her story certainly matches any that Mom and Aunt Jessie ever told about their lives in the Great Depression.