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Books About Life on a Farm Written Especially for People Who Like to Read! "Highly recommended reading." The Midwest Book Review Reviews & Readers' Comments |
LeAnn R. Ralph Rural Route 2 Author E6689 970th Ave. Colfax, WI 54730 (715) 308-6336 |
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by LeAnn R. Ralph For as long as I live, I will the carry the memory of my mother's stories about growing up on our small farm. This is the farm my great grandfather homesteaded. The farm where I grew up. The farm that still remains in the family today, owned and worked by my brother. My mother was born in 1916. From one hot summer long ago when she was a child comes the story of the hen. Grandmother Inga, an immigrant from Norway, had always wanted chickens. And finally, she acquired a Wyandotte setting hen who had laid a fine batch of eggs. Wyandottes, bred for both meat and eggs, are black and white - the color of skunks, too. One hot summer night - while the hen was still incubating her eggs - the whole family escaped the heat of the small farmhouse to sleep on the screen porch. Inga awoke to the sounds of a much-alarmed hen. Grandfather Nils set out to investigate, armed with a pitchfork. As my mother and grandmother waited breathlessly in the dark, they heard the hen squawk and Grandfather Nils exclaim "Ny deva herna!"(phonetic spelling), which translates from Norwegian into "No, that was the hen!" In whatever light existed from the moon and the stars, something black and white had scampered past Nils. Thinking it was the skunk he was certain had invaded the chicken coop, he stabbed at it with the fork. When the hen squawked, he knew he had been mistaken. After a brief while, the stench of skunk wafted to the screen porch, closely followed by Nils, himself. Although my grandfather had killed the hen, he had gotten the stunk, too. But not before it had destroyed all the eggs. That was my grandmother's first and last venture into chickens. With the death of the hen and the destruction of the eggs died Inga's dream of fine chicken dinners and eggs galore. And for years after, my mother said, whenever it rained, the odor of skunk emanated from the place where Nils had killed the invader. And it always reminded Mom of the night she heard from out of the darkness, "No, that was the hen!" LeAnn R. Ralph is the author of the books "Christmas in Dairyland (True Stories from a Wisconsin Farm)" (2003), "Give Me a Home Where the Dairy Cows Roam (2004); "Preserve Your Family History (A Step-by-Step Guide for Interviewing Family Members and Writing an Oral History)" (2004). |
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