September Song

Tomorrow is the first official day of autumn and it seems to have arrived here in south-central Kentucky with all of its delights and offerings. This following was shared by Joberta Wells, a regular columnist for The Casey County News and a regular 'hoot.' She returned to Casey County in 1994 after being away for over three decades. It's a great place to come back to, or to move to, that's for certain. Joberta writes:

'Years ago every little community in Casey County, Kentucky had a correspondent for The Casey County News. They collected tidbits of happenings from their areas and submitted these news items. You knew who got married, who had a baby, who died, who went to Lexington to see a specialist (a doctor with more training and education than the local general practitioner), whose cow broke through the fence into a neighbor's corn field, etc.


The correspondents for Yosemite, KY were sisters named **Wauda Coffey and Jesse Anderson. These ladies engaged in rather florid prose but occasionally they got it just right. In the September 22, 1949 edition of The Casey County News they reported the following':
   

The countryside is taking on the richness of autumn. Almost all the tobacco is in the barns where one sees the long leaves turning to pale gold. September has been perfect for curing the crop and for making the fall hay. Mowing machines are busy and fields are dotted with green bales, or bordered with stacks, and barns are being filled. Cornfields are brown and look a month later than the calendar says. Nature's flower garden is bright with goldenrod, purple ironweed, and many other blossoms. Buds of the summer farewell are opening instead of waiting for October to call them on the stage. It's a lovely time to be living.'

**Yes, she really was a woman named 'Wauda' –– I had changed it to Wanda, thinking it a type-o and Joberta nicely reminded me not to do that!

Farm Attic: Part 2 on Chicken Farming

Cover art is often a selling point of older magazines
but I also like farm-related magazines for their content.

Yesterday I received a magazine I had ordered––mainly for the cover, but also for the content. The Farmer's Wife eventually merged with The Farm Journal but for several decades it was its own magazine. It was specifically 'A Magazine for Farm Women' with fictional stories, recipes, columns and useful advice for home and farm. You can still find these magazines, on occasion, in good condition (eBay, for one) and I got this one for less than I'd pay for a new magazine. I want to frame the cover, above, and keep the contents (or frame the magazine and photocopy inside first).

So in browsing the contents I was pleased and delighted to find––especially after yesterday's first installment of 'Farm Attic,' with the photo of Mammy Wells with her chickens, c. 1924––a column in this July 1926 issue of The Farmer's Wife called 'The Farm Woman's Poultry Business.' Here is an excerpt:

Who is interested in raising or breeding poultry? First the farmer's wife, for she knows the value of the fresh egg, the spring fry, the Thanksgiving turkey, the Christmas goose. Her family must be supplied with the very best. Next comes the housewife with the backyard flock. Then the teacher, the banker, the preacher, the club boys and girls, and lastly the men and women who make their entire living from the rightly named 'commercial flock'––they keep no birds that can not pay their way. Sentiment is eliminated... Some day we may have an over-production but when that time comes if each individual in the United States eats three and one-half chickens a year, the entire supply will be wiped out.

Of all agricultural products in the United States, in 1923 only four (dairy products, corn, cotton and hogs) were of greater value than poultry [which is listed as a value of $1,050,000,000 dollars in 1926!]...We have never known the time when there wasn't some sort of poultry in the barnyard or the back yard and because it is so common most of us have taken it for granted and do not know its history or its economic value.

~ From the column, 'The Farm Woman's Poultry Business,' conducted by Clara M. Sutter, The Farmer's Wife, July 1926, pp. 366-367.  

Written on the back of this photo: 'Brooder house and Grandma Bannie's
chickens across the drive near the corner of road.' c. 1940

Here is a related photo from the history of our own farm. We're just over the Casey County line in Pulaski County, a mile or so as the crow flies from Mintonville, and we can see Green River Knob from our own knob (so we can at least see Casey County). The house on the left still exists and was updated in the 1990s by the former owner. It is now our farm cottage. And, among other things, we keep chickens, too.

Farm Attic: Mammy and Her Chickens

This photo shows Elizabeth (Lizzie) Sweeney Wells, c. 1924, with her flock of chickens. Lizzie was the grandmother of Joberta Wells, who submitted this photograph. Joberta lives on her grandmother's farm, just outside of Yosemite, and in recent years recreated the classic three-gabled farmhouse from the foundation up.

Farm women were often photographed with their chickens and it is one of the most common scenes depicted in old farm photographs. Women tended the flocks on small amounts of land around the farmhouse or yard and gathered the eggs. Their 'egg money' was a valuable asset to farm income and their flock would have been a source of personal pride. Tending chickens was also an area where younger children could assist, including feeding and egg-gathering.

In an excellent paper on The Contemporary Farm Woman: 1860 to the Present, published by the Central New York Resource Conservation and Development, Inc. [Isn't the Internet amazing?] Stephanie Fisher writes:

"Women could exercise complete control over the production and income of their chickens. However, women often chose to spend the money to assist the farm or farm home. During hard economic times, the egg money, known as ‘pin-money,’ often saved the farm when their husband’s commodities failed to provide income...Women’s participation in chicken farming and the production of eggs continued until around the 1940s."

[World War II changed society and farming practices, after which factory-farming became more prevalent. However, in many rural areas, such as Casey County and throughout much of Kentucky, sustenance farming continued, much as it does today with household gardens, chickens and other livestock to support the family.]

Do you have a farm story or photographs to share in our 'Farm Attic'? We'd love to see them here and if you'd like to write something about Casey County farm history, stories or traditions, we are happy to publish it.

NOTE: For two excellent first-hand period accounts of life with chickens, read Betty MacDonald's classic The Egg and I, written in 1945 and made into a movie (that launched the popular Ma and Pa Kettle films) or Mildred Armstrong's recent best-selling account of Midwestern farm life in the 1930s, Little Heathens–Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression

Thanks to Joberta Wells for her contribution to this entry.