Vintage poultry magazines

Our friend Hal Bergan reminded us that yesterday was the birthday of the man who wrote The Wizard of Oz and lots of other books. Lyman Frank Baum was born in Chittenango, New York, on May 15, 1856.

His father was a wealthy oil tycoon, and the family lived at an idyllic country home in upstate New York. Frank was a shy and absent-minded child; he had a heart condition his entire life and was never able to exert himself physically. To instill some discipline in him, his parents sent him to military school, but he had a heart attack at school and returned home, where he turned his creativity toward writing and publishing.

When he was 15 years old, his father bought him a small printing press for his birthday, and he and his brother Harry started a newspaper called The Rose Lawn Home Journal. Frank was also interested in raising Hamburg chickens, and he published what sounds like a "must-have for the poultryphile" magazine called The Poultry Record. His first book was published in 1886 and was called The Book of Hamburgs, A Brief Treatise upon the Mating, Rearing, and Management of Different Varieties of Hamburgs.


This is the time of year when everyone is just dying to get into the garden, to get our hands all dirty and start getting the plants ready for a new growing season after the long - long - long winter and cold spring. Well, guess what? The chickens feel the same way. They beg and beg and beg to come out of the coop, and when we finally let them out, they head straight for the garden to scratch for bugs amongst the lily shoots that are just emerging, or to take extravagant dust baths next to the hosts. Too close for a gardener's comfort.

Gardening with chickens is a lot like gardening with a two year old. Really cute and awfully funny, but very likely to undo your work as soon as you turn your back and guaranteed to be in your face every second. We tried to take a picture of Strider in her dust bath, but she was too quick and curious.

"Hey! Whatcha doin' with that shiny thing? Got anything for me?"

Cynthia Quinn and Kathleen De'Angelo in the CLUCK Coop Garden.
What a great day for art! Or pretty much anything else.

A thousand thanks to the artists who spend a lovely day at CLUCK the Chicken Store on Sunday painting portraits of chickens. Artists included Cynthia Quinn, Jan Norsetter, Diane Washa, Kathleen D’Angelo and Nancy Markham Troller.

Rich Joseph from Joseph Staudt Hops in Neosho stopped at CLUCK the Chicken Store last week to suggest that hops and chickens might make good company. Rich is vice president of the Wisconsin Hops Exchange, a cooperative that encourages small growers to get into the hops business.

We have considered growing hops for several years just because we like the smell of the plant and, of course, we like beer. But we never connected hops with chickens.

Rich suggested that hops vines might make excellent shade plants for chickens who live in sunny yards. Hops grows fast and has large leaves. The vines can be trained to follow a wire or trellis, so it is theoretically possible to create a hops arbor without much trouble.