Head in the Clouds – Feet in the Dirt

When I am writing down various “Ruby Stories” I feel sad I can’t get into a time machine with my camera and snap some photos of the people, places and events that she talks about. To have a photo of the Chinaman who delivered vegetables by horse and cart to the more remote farms, or capture an image of ‘Toddler Margie’ being wheeled down to the blackberry patch in a barrow, because Ruby had a taste for blackberry pie that night, and the path was no place for a proper pram!

So as I tell tonight’s story, I’ll just have to run a tandem picture story of the current events in Ruby’s garden!

When Ruby was about 14 years old, the property they lived on had (among other things) around 50 chickens. There were always hens and young roosters, plus plenty of chicks. Eggs were plentiful, and a fresh chicken dinner was a much welcomed change from corned meat.

Remember – no fridge to store meat for longer periods of time like we enjoy today!

At this particular time, Ruby’s Granny had fallen ill, and Ruby’s mother made the trip over the water (to Melbourne) to take care of her for a short while.

Well, Sunday rolled around, Mum wasn’t home and the usual roast chicken dinner was in danger of not happening because Ruby’s father was much to busy to sort that kind of thing out. The kids (Ruby, her sister and two brothers) were not keen on missing out on their fresh roasted chicken dinner.

They convinced their father that they could do it because “they knew everything” (don’t we all at 14 years old?)

So between a visiting girlfriend of Ruby’s and the two boys, they ran down a fat healthy rooster, dispatched, plucked and cleaned – just as they saw their mother do!

Unfortunately at this point Ruby realised that she didn’t know how to do the stuffing and came to the conclusion that you can’t actually bake a chook if it didn’t have stuffing!

Enter plan B.

Boil Chicken.

They knew enough to put some vegies in the pot with the chicken – some onion & carrots.

Ruby’s dad got in and checked on progress – only to find wheat floating around in the water with the chicken & vegetables! “What did you put in it??”

Turned out, even though they did a great job of cleaning the bird, they didn’t take the crop out so the unfortunate chickens last breakfast was now floating in Sunday’s dinner.

Ruby can’t recollect how her Dad saved Sunday dinner – she suspects he threw out the water and started again.

Things were totally fine until her mother returned from Melbourne and couldn’t seem to locate her recently purchased prize breeding rooster!!!!

There were scolding’s all around, but most of the heat was taken by her father for not supervising the children well enough!!

Apparently they were not popular!!

I wondered what they did with all the eggs. 50 chickens really means a lot of spare eggs, and because all the nearby farms had their own poultry as well, you couldn’t give or sell them to your neighbours.

Apparently, once motor vehicles were a bit more common, a fellow with a truck did the rounds of the out of town properties with groceries. You could make an order with him and he would deliver to your door. At the same time you could offload all your excess eggs as well – which would reduce your grocery bill

It was the job of the kids, of course, to collect the eggs.

After school, eggs needed collecting, someone needed to gather the ‘morning sticks’ (kindling to start the fire the next morning) and someone needed to bring the cow in.

Bringing in the cow really was the most sought after job because you got to ride the pony!! A few sibling squabbles took place over this, even though they were meant to take turns.  Really – some things never change no matter what decade we live in!

I enjoyed my cuppa with Ruby and writing the story down – she had a real chuckle when I told her I wanted the story of cooking the wrong chook!

I left her in her warm lounge room with her knitting

Cheers