Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [17]
I don’t understand architecture to any great depth, but some intangible element of the farm buildings of the early 1900s has always pulled at me. I can’t put my finger on it any more than to say it has something to do with proportion, and they look like they belonged on the place. They weren’t plastic or steel, they didn’t look like oversize Fisher-Price accessories. I dream of a chicken coop that looks like it’s been there a while. I want to view it from my window some hazy morning and imagine I am preparing to harness horses for the day’s plowing. I will then grind a batch of imported free-trade coffee beans, fire up the computer, and update myself on the travails of decadent starlets. So it goes. Imagine the wizened quality of a life blanched of contradiction and double standard. And lest I disparage the Internet, today while noodling around it I wound up at the online home of the North Dakota State University Extension Service, where I discovered a historical archive of poultry housing plans dating back to 1924. It was like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls, without all the spelunking. We’re talking Colony Cage Layer Barns, Broiler Breed Barns, Roll-A-Way Poultry Nests, Sloped Strawlofts, and—with an eye to the possible future—a Turkey Brood & Grow Barn. After three hours of close study and lost man-hours, I am currently mind-planning a gorgeous hybrid based on the Shed Roof Poultry House (particularly the 1933 and 1950 models) with significant modifications drawn from the 1951 Portable Brooder.
Vintage coop plans notwithstanding, history is not on my side. As a wannabe handyman, I am haunted by high hopes, false starts, and even worse finishes. Evidence surrounds me: the engine heater I bought and left beneath the truck seat until the packaging fell away; the bathroom faucet I bought after purchasing my New Auburn house twelve years ago and never installed (it’s still there, under the sink); a perfectly hung screen door (I hired a guy). I can trace the trouble all the way back to when I was five years old. Dad was remodeling the barn, and I decided to help. It was deepest winter, but I bundled up and trekked outside, determined to pitch in. Dad handed me a hammer. First thing I did was lick it. Rather than the sweet electric taste of the shiny steel, I felt a numb, crinkly sensation as the hammerhead froze fast to my tongue. Panicking, I yanked it loose, pulling away a perfect circle of skin. I forsook carpentering and went into the house to read comics and taste the raw spot over and over.
One does not become a farmer simply by taking possession of a milk cow, but it does drag you in that direction. The night Dad tied that Holstein to the Falcon, he tied an anchor to his ankle. From that day forward he would find his way to the barn a minimum of twice a day, every day, morning and night, seven days a week, with no break, year after year after year. Whenever we went to Christmas dinner, or visiting of a Sunday afternoon, Dad kept shooting looks at the clock. Sometime around 4:00 p.m., he’d say, “Weeelll, I s’pose…” Then someone else would push back from the table and say, “Yep, them cow’s ain’t gonna milk themselves,” and we headed home.
Dad went pretty easy on us with the milking. While many of our schoolmates had to milk every morning and night, John and I traded off helping Dad every other evening. The chores began when Dad switched on a vacuum pump plumbed to pipes that ran the length of the barn and created the negative pressure that drew the milk from the cow’s udder into the pail of the milking machine. The pump was vented outside via an exhaust pipe that emitted a noise similar to an extended bout of oily flatulence. If I heard the vacuum pump start before I crossed the yard after supper, I knew I was running late.