Animals

The one and only dog I've ever had, Nosey.

I thought I would do a continuation of yesterday’s post.  As I have mentioned, I grew up out in Pine Canyon.  It’s about three miles East of Tooele, nestled up against the base of the mountains.  When I grew up out there, it was a very small and quiet stretch of road.  Now, the fields I used to romp around in and hunt down lizards and horny toads are all houses, neighborhoods, and subdivisions.  It’s quite strange for me to venture out to Tooele these days and see how much that once little sleepy town has grown. 

I mentioned in yesterday’s post how we had an acre of ground with fruit trees and a garden.  My family lived off the land as much as we possibly could.  We had a mini orchard with a pie cherry tree, a regular cherry tree, apple trees, peach trees, pear trees, and plum trees.  We grew grapes, and had a raspberry patch to die for, it was huge and not only that, it produced some of the biggest raspberries you ever did see.  We had a garden with a nice Strawberry patch.  We grew corn, green beans, tomatoes, green peppers, peas, and pumpkins for making pumpkin pies.  My brothers and I had to help all summer long with weeding the garden and come fall we would be hands deep in helping with the canning of it all. 

Our back yard was a fun back yard, not only did we have the mini orchard and garden but we had a huge Russian Olive tree that we built a tree house in.  There was a tire swing that my dad put up and we had a Tarzan swing.  Dad would let us dig in certain parts of the yard.  Out at the very back of the yard we had a pond with a chicken coop and pig pen.  Because not only did we live off the land with fruits and vegetables but we raised our own meat.

DISCLAIMER:  I am NOT a vegetarian or a vegan.  I never have been and I have no intentions of ever becoming so.  If any of you reading this are of that persuasion, I caution you to read no further.  DISCLAIMER PART TWO: I do not believe in animal cruelty, I believe it is wrong.  For example, I personally do not like dogs and therefore would never own one.  As I said yesterday, I like cats for some of the very reasons people dislike them.  The same is true for dog owners, they love their dogs for the very reasons I dislike them.   To each their own, however, I do not agree with people who would mistreat an animal just because they didn’t like the species, or because they could earn money by making the animal fight.  I do believe however, that animals were placed on this earth by our Heavenly Father for our use.  Part of that use is for food.  I know there are people who would disagree with me on that.  I suggest we agree to disagree agreeably.  We will never see eye to eye on that point.  I’m sure you have figured out from my disclaimer that we raised animals for meat purposes.  Our animals were never mistreated or abused in any way.  They were well fed and cared for animals.  They had plenty of food, water, and shelter.  They were given all the necessities of life they needed and required.  And I know there are people out there against the very use of animals for a food source and would consider the very act of us raising these animals for that purpose as offensive and abusive.  As I said, I’m not one of those kinds of people so it would be pointless to argue that further.  I like meat, I will always eat meat.  Having that all out of the way, let’s get to the meat of my story.  Pun intended.

We had two kinds of chickens.  We had layer chickens.  These were the chickens that we would rely on for our eggs.  And let me tell you, there is nothing in this world like a fresh egg.  The pitiful things we buy in the stores are a sorry excuse for what an egg really should look and taste like.  Then we had our fryer chickens and yes folks, that was part of our meat.  We butchered our own chickens every year.  And my brothers and I had to help in the whole process.  We would start out early in the morning with what was our favorite part.  We called it going to the “movies”, much to the chagrin of mom.  She always called us her blood thirsty children.  I guess to an extent we were.  The reason we called it “going to the movies” was because after dad lopped of the head, they had to be hung upside down to let the blood drain out.  In order to not bruise and spoil the meat you had to be very quick and skilled.  You had to tie the wings and feet together quickly to prevent the chicken from flopping around and spoiling the meat.  Dad was very quick and skilled at this, but even the best of the best don’t always get it right.  Our hope was to see one of the chickens come loose and run around the yard with its head cut off.  After the butchering came our least favorite part of the process……the plucking.  The easiest way to pluck a chicken is to dip it in hot water to loosen the feathers and then pluck them out as quick and fast as you can.  The smell, wet chickens stink, the feathers would stick to your fingers and the small fine feathers were a pain to try and pull.  After the plucking, things got pretty interesting as we would watch dad gut the chickens and cut them into specific pieces.  We found the intestines to be fascinating and loved to watch dad cut open the gizzard and we could sometimes see half eaten grasshoppers.    And remember my cats I mentioned, they also loved this part.  It was a feeding frenzy as they would hang about waiting for dad to toss down the parts that were unusable.  After a while the cats would have eaten their fill and couldn’t eat any more.  Dad always saved the heart and gizzard, I had a particular taste for chicken heart and my brothers would always fight over the gizzard come our regular Sunday dinner of chicken.   My brothers and I would spend our summer days with empty gallon milk jugs out in the yard catching grasshoppers.  We would pull off the hoppers and shove them in the jug.  When our jug was full we would go out to the chicken run and dump the grasshoppers out then we would sit back and enjoy the show as the chickens would run around like nuts trying to eat as many grasshoppers as they could.  We would also hunt down the tomato worms in the tomato patch and watch the chickens flock to eat the big juicy worms. 

We also raised Turkeys.  And let me tell you, these Turkeys were nothing like the small pathetic things you find in the stores when the holidays roll around.  Our turkeys could get up to 35 pounds.  And let me tell you, butchering a 35 pound Turkey is no easy feat.  Our ward always had a Thanksgiving dinner for the widows, and dad would supply the Turkey’s for it.  The hitch is that the young men would have to come over and help to butcher and prepare the Turkey.  There was one year that I will never forget.  We had a young man in the ward who rode bulls in the rodeo.  He was a stout young fellow and figured that since he was stout and a pretty good rodeo rider that he could just sit on the Turkey while dad loped off its head.  The plan went well until the Turkey’s head came off.  I’ve never seen such shock on a person’s face before.  This Turkey stood up and took off across the yard with the young man on its back holding on for dear life.  The headless Turkey managed to buck him off sending him sprawling across the yard into the dirt.  Needless to say the poor kid never lived that event down.  He could ride bucking bulls but not a bucking Turkey. 

And we also raised pigs.  We learned a lesson one year, never buy male pigs.  No matter how well constructed your pen is, they will find a way out.  And if you want any hopes of a garden, pigs should not be in it rooting around.  And cattle prods have no effect on a full grown male pig.  We stuck with getting either female pigs or neutered males, much easier to deal with.  My mom, just recently found out that I used to go out and play in the mud with the pigs.  I thought she always knew.  Oh well.  I was smart enough to only play with the pigs when they were little.  We always bought them as piglets in the spring.  Once the pigs got big enough I would not go back into the pen.  I hope that sets your mind at ease some mom.  LOL.  I don’t know about my brothers, but I always named each pig and then later would wonder who I was eating.  I don’t know why I did that, but I did.  Members of the ward would buy a pig and my dad would raise it.  When the pigs were big enough, those who had purchased a pig would come to help wrangle them up to be sent off to the butcher shop.  One year our bishop purchased a pig.  We were having a time getting those pigs into the trailer.  Somehow I think it was the year we got the male pigs.  Anyway, this one pig got loose and ran directly between the bishops legs and took one very startled bishop on a ride around the yard. 

We had a pond out in the back yard and naturally had to have ducks and geese.  We didn’t eat the ducks and geese, we just had them for the fun of it.  One year my older brother brought some tadpoles home from a scout camp and put them in the pond.  They multiplied very quickly.  On a summer night, our back yard would get quite noisy.  But the benefit was we never had to deal with mosquitos or other annoying summer bugs.  Behind our house was a huge open field.  We would spend our summer days out there hunting lizards and horny toads to bring home as pets.  Mom would never let us bring them in the house and always made us turn them loose in the yard.  We never had to worry much about snails and other bugs that would destroy our garden. 

I will end this blog post with telling you about my first pet ever.  He was a dog named Nosey.  We called him Nosey because he had a white spot on his nose.  We got him when we first moved from Colorado to Utah and it was before we were established enough to raise chickens.  I don’t have very many memories of Nosey as we didn’t have him for very long.  Nosey had a terrible habit of following the school bus to school.  I can remember many a time being at school to see a flock of kids around something only to find out it was my dog Nosey coming to be with us at school.  We would have to go into the office and call mom to come get him.  One day Nosey followed us to school and we never saw him again.  I’ve always wondered what happened to him.  He’s one of the very few and rare dogs that I’ve ever loved.  After that, we got the chickens and decided it wasn’t the best thing in the world to mix dogs and chickens as dogs have a tendency to chase chickens.  And a frightened chicken won’t lay eggs.  Instead we started having cats and I discovered that I liked cats much more than dogs.   We did have the mice and birds to fight with and like I said, there is no better mouse trap than a cat.  I remember our first cat was named “mama.”