Minnie Rose Lovgreen
I’m sure you remember the book, “Tuesdays With Morrie.” It was the story of a journalist who spent every Tuesday for a certain period of time with a former teacher who was dying. Morrie would basically just answer questions and talk about life and what’s important in life.
It was a beautiful book. Well, I just read a nice interview that reminded me of that. But instead of life, it was about chickens.
It’s the story behind the small booklet, “Recipe for Raising Chickens.” The booklet was put together by a woman named Nancy Rekow, whose neighbor was Minnie Rose Lovgreen, a chicken raiser for nearly 80 years. (Rekow has more recently put out a book, “As Far as I Can Remember,” that chronicles Lovgreen’s life.)
At the time, Lovgreen was 86 and diagnosed with cancer (my goodness, how many good people have been taken by that?). She had always wanted to write a book about raising chickens. So Rekow said, let’s start. The two sat together in the hospital and Rekow recorded everything.
Rekow notes how Lovgreen really had an ability to understand chicken language and behavior, and mentions the following example:
She knew secrets and she had probably raised chickens for 80 years or so and she always had her ears open and eyes open and studied everything around her. So she observed things about the chickens that nobody else knew. I can read you a little section here from page 7 of the book.
If you peek at a setting hen she says quark, quark, quark in a deep ugly voice to say, ‘don’t bother me.’ She’s very protective when she’s setting. The person should wear gloves to reach in there because the hen will peck. Her beak is like a hard little fish hook…
The day before her babies hatch she doesn’t go off the nest at all. She stays right on it. Say about the 18th day, the baby chick is picking at the shell, trying to make a hole to get out. It peeps, and her mother puts her head under and talks to it, even in the shell. She says, in a deep tone, quirk, quirk, quirk. As much as saying hush, everything will be alright.
This whole interview is so worth reading. Check it out here.
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