Outside Looking In
A hen education
Having lived my entire life as a "city slicker", I admittedly no little about farm life, although I do know where our food comes from as opposed to some who have indicated it "comes from a store".
A story that appears in this week's Mascot deals with a 12-year-old girl named Kelly Myhre whose head is filled with knowledge about chickens. And was I ever schooled. I left the Rick and Stephanie Myhre farm a few miles south of Minneota last Thursday with more information about chickens than I had ever known in my life.
Not only does Kelly know chickens., but she is Mother Hen to them. No matter where she goes or what she is doing, they seemingly follow her like a Pied Piper.
She gives them a ride on her bike or on her swing, and not once does the hen flop around as if if wants to free itself. She carries Linda, the eldest of the 13 hens at four years old, down to the mailbox with the others tagging along. She will sit on the deck and gently pet a hen until it falls asleep.
As she tells what the hens like and dislike to eat, she informs me that a hen won't touch the fallen apples from their tree.
"The seeds are poisonous to chickens," she said, referring to the inside of a seed that contains cyanide. Although the amount of toxins in an apple is small enough that humans can detoxify them, they can be lethal to a chicken.
And when one or two of the chickens wandered around some feed on the ground while the others gobbled it up, Kelly explained about the "pecking order" of chickens in which they eat in the same order each time (explained further in the story on Page 1).
And I just figured you feed a chicken, it grows up, and it eventually ends up on my grill or in the oven.
The hens will also peck on anything shiny, so Kelly and her mother, Stephanie, have to avoid walking barefooted in the yard if they have nail polish on their toes.
The hens go to bed around dusk each night and the dominant hen, Opal in this case, makes sure all the other 12 chickens are in the coop before she enters. As Kelly points out the door on the coop that they enter, she laughs as I read the sign next to the door "Last one in is a rotten egg". Poor Opal.
In these recent times of COVID-19, racism, riots and looting, it was a comforting feeling to spend a day on a makeshift chicken ranch being taught things about chickens I never knew before.
And Kelly seemed to enjoy playing the part of educator as evidenced by her indelible smile.
When I got back home that night, I decided to have pork chops for supper instead of chicken. Not sure what I'll do if my next story is a trip to a hog farm.
Masks help pool
As Gislason's Ace Hardware sits a plastic tub of masks for children and adults in various patterns and designs. They were sewn and donated by Becky Rolbiecki, with all proceeds from the sale of the free-will donation ($5 minimum) masks going to the Pool Pals to help defray the cost of the upcoming surface repair on the adult pool.
This is a two-fold great idea; not only do these masks help in preventing the spread of the virus, it also helps to get the pool repaired so it doesn't have to be shut down.
The masks are generating a lot of money for the pool. Stop in and get yours today at Gislason's Hardware. And don't forget to thank Becky.
Office hours
As we await the start of our new office manager, who will begin duties on Sept. 14, we have limited open hours at the Mascot.
The office will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. next Monday (Sept. 7), but we will be closed the rest of the week. We will resume our normal hours the week of Sept. 14; open Monday and Tuesday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Wednesday 9 a.m. to noon.
If anyone needs assistance or has a question, please call me at 320-894-6007 or email me at scott@thomabooks,com. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we will soon have things running normal.