As I watch “Sigmund III” and the 3 turkey hens wander all over the farm, I thought about when Tim and I were kids and there were always all kinds of chickens running loose around the farm. Tim and I used to venture out into the chicken coop (the one I accidentally burned down) to make the chicken’s lives miserable. I really tried to find a good pic of the old coop, but was unable to. However, I did find it in the background of another old pic that I cropped it from (see it below). Too bad they parked a hay wagon with a rack on it to block the view, but you can get some idea of what it looked like at any rate. The coop was kind of interesting in that the ceiling consisted of straw bales held up by fence wire. At the east end were 3 or 4 stepped rows of 2X4’s the width of the coop for the chickens to “roost” on at night. To the left, on the north side were rows of nesting boxes with a canvas flap on each one. We would go in to gather the eggs and if a hen were still sitting on them, they would peck us when we put our hands into it. Most of our chickens were “Rhode Island Reds”, and they laid brown eggs. I have always preferred brown eggs as opposed to white eggs since that’s what we ate for the most part. The “experts” claim there’s no difference between white and brown eggs, but I can tell a slight difference! Even as our parents said there was no difference between “bathroom” and “kitchen” water, I could always tell the difference whenever they would bring me a drink in the middle of the night! (“Kitchen” water tastes better then “bathroom” water, at least to me it always did)! They were always trying to get rid of weasels that would get in at night and eat the eggs and they had an old aluminum feed bucket upside down with a slot cut out of it. Underneath it was a trap with bait to trap any wiley weasel that would venture into the coop at night. I always thought it was an ingenious way to trap any weasels or rats and keep the chickens from getting injured by the trap! I never remember any vermin caught in the trap, so may just the threat of its presence kept any vermin at bay? The ironic thing was that even though they had traps set to keep the vermin from getting the eggs, they didn’t ever figure out how to keep the biggest and most destructive vermin out of the coop. What were these unstoppable vermin, yeah, you guessed it, it was US! Tim and I would quite often go into the coop and grab all the eggs. Any other “farm kids” would no doubt take all the gathered eggs into the kitchen for meals, but NOT US! We would gather all the eggs, then go outside and throw them against the corncrib building for “target practice”! The pic below the title is an actual pic of the corncrib, which was our target. For years, until it finally fell down in the mid 1960’s, there were hundreds of dark stains all over the east side of the corn crib! Apparently, once and a while they got to the eggs before we did, since I can remember eating a lot of brown eggs for breakfast growing up. One of my favorite lunches was fried egg sandwiches with catsup! Yum yum! In fact, I think I’ll go to the fridge and grab some eggs and make one right now! (Luckily they have places that gather eggs and sell them without the danger of young kids getting to them first for target practice!)