Back At The Chicken Shack

[Lauravonsmurf]

A little bit of my village‘s history

1915 photograph of the Village of Fair Oaks Bridge… I actually have been across it when I was a kid in a really old car (a horseless buggy design)… the bridge is no longer open to car travel.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

4099 Bridge Street, Fair Oaks

It started as a gas station, was a coop, a florist, a new age healing, and now a hair salon.

 

[Sally PB]

Very interesting! Love the old photos.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Some pictures of the girls running around… the little wood coop in the background is not their main house. It is used for getting a new bird used to the flock, or just a couple bantams at night. Currently the whole flock is housed in a big house.

I know Inky is laying, she is hiding the eggs, kids found one, she is sneaky. She wants babies. Only Inky and the Olive Eggers are laying. The other birds have not started yet.

Cecile

Lana and Caterina

Aelita

Inky

Igraine and Cecile

Igraine and Guinevere and Eevena’s tail

Caterina and Cecile

Lana’s head, Coratina’s back, Cecile’s back, Inky’s body, and Caterina

Caterina and Inky

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

1736 English Wine Battered Fried Chicken Recipe
from Dictionarium Domesticum:

A Marinade is defined as a pickled meat, either of flesh (land animal) or fish…

Quarter or cut up your chicken into the more common 8 pieces…Wash your meat.

Place meat in the following mixture and let soak for 3 hours.

Lemon Juice of two large lemons.
Equal amount of verjuice or vinegar.
Verjuice is the juice of unripe, unfermented grapes
if using vinegar: malt vinegar and apple cider vinegar is suggested though distilled can be used.
To the juice add
Salt
Pepper
Cloves
Chibels (Soring Onion Greens, Chive Greens, Scallion Greens) diced
One or Two Bay Leaves

Batter
Flour about One and a half cups
White Wine to create a pancake type batter then add
Three Egg Yolks, add more wine if needed


Coat chicken pieces in Batter and fry
Recipe uses lard but you can use your preference of oil

Garnish
Fried Chopped Parsley
Fried Thin Sliced Lemons

Plate Fried Chicken in a Pyramid, and put fried parsley and fried lemon on and around it.

Thoughts:

To may knowledge this recipe is Kosher, except for the lard oil… easy to substitute that out.

The use of Lemon and Vinegar in a three hour marinade would help prevent spoiling and kill bacteria in a cooking environment very different from today.

The marinade should tenderize the meat (I have used lemon and vinegar in cleaning and marinating white meats). This might be a good recipe to try on an older chicken and a traditional fryer.


I left the other recipes for everyone to try too and the bit on Marigolds because it is interesting and I had no idea powdered Dried Earthworms where once used medicinally… btw the Marigold being referred to is Pot marigold (Calendula officinalis) Aka Calendula

The book is super cool, it covers everything… link to PDF of book: https://archive.org/details/b30505513/page/n7/mode/2up

Watch a guy cook it…

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Fair Oaks Village during the 1950s, Fair Oaks Blvd (old photos from the net)

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Fair Oaks Village‘s Chickens, they belong to the town and are protected from harassment here.

These are photos other people have taken, I need to get a better camera than my cell phone…

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

I had to go look up powdered earth-worm, it is still used in Asian medicine and it was a medicine already ancient when the Chinese book, Shen Nong Ben Cao circa 1229 was written. There however are few modern studies on it. I am not sure how it is medicinally used in Asian medicine.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

I found a whole section on game fowl in The Complete Gamester printed in 1674. (The book is pretty interesting, lots of games and sports in it) Now obviously the book’s chapter is game fowl centered but none the less chickens are chickens… so just interesting things… use at own risk… I would be very cautious on any of this… but this is how they treated chickens in the ye olden days…

Breeding Season is from the increase of the Moon in February to the increase of the Moon in March. Pretty short and the text says it takes two years to raise, condition and mature a game fowl correctly.

Dust Bath Dust is created with sand, ash, and gravel finely sifted… I might make this for giggles.

Human Urine is used a lot for both medical reasons and even in feed.

Perfume their house with Pennyroyal or Rosemary, I am figuring he meant using the smoke. Though I have put herbs actually in the house and nests of my birds... rosemary is one of the herbs I use, might try growing Pennyroyal.

For prevention of Maladies (caused by dirty water) Finely minced leek greens mixed with their regular diet.

White corn is good to feed cockerels and cocks, but no explanation as to why only white.

Pip is treated by scraping off the scales with your nails and then rubbing the bird’s tongue with salt.

Roop treated by opening up sore, cleaning out the core, place with water and salt. (I guess he means rinse it good)

Flux is treated with scalded “Pease-Bran”

If they cannot “mute”… umm not sure at all, it could be molt?… anyhow anoint vents (he did not say with what… but based on text I vote Butter) and feed them corn soaked in man’s urine.

Treating Lice: Beat pepper (black probably) into a powder, mix with warm water and wash them.

Sore or injuries to eyes, take a leaf or two of ground ivy, chew it well, spit the juice in their eye.

Injuries, suck the (clotted) blood out of wounds and clean with warm Urine. If the injury swells repeat the process. Then pounce the wound (powder) with a fine powder of Herb Robert. The bird should be kept in a warm quiet place (he actually describes what he calls a “stove” for this purpose… sort of a way to keep the bird warm and quiet. He has the bird being fed a “scouring” which is a recipe for cleaninsing them internally as well during the first treatment, feed injuries birds a handful of bread in warm Urine.

If you find any swollen bunches hard and blackish in their heads, you are going to open them, crush the core out with your thumbs, suck out the corruption, fill the hole left with fresh Butter.

When dubbing combs and wattles, anoint injury area with Sweet- Butter, until healed.

There is a special bread recipe, lots of feeding Urine to birds… advice on stuff like perches and soft flooring in pens to prevent what sounds like Bumble Foot to me. Of course advice on choosing birds to keep and breed, how to help the hen successfully incubate her eggs and so on.

So there is your 1600s chicken first aid kit… fresh sweet butter, urine, salt, clean water, spit, ground ivy, herb robert, rosemary, pepper, pennyroyal, and a place you can keep bird quiet, wrapped up, in the dark, and nicely warm…

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

A couple of the girls free ranging…

One the metal pens that we will be erecting

The chicken area is in process of redesign… before I caught Covid we had started moving out coops tearing up paving and raised beds (I grew things in their run), anyhow next we need to even out the ground, then put down bricks (bricks are to prevent anything digging under and into area.… I want to cut back the fruit vines and replace the screen and add a second layer of wire fencing on the main fence, I am also going to add paneling I think about 3 feet up... next erect all the pens and get new houses built… and the garden beds and yard cleanup for spring planting needs to happen… catching Covid and this Covid caused pneumonia has really messed with my project schedule. Since the kids (my niece and nephew) have garden boxes and want baby chicks they will be helping. My lungs are still recovering so I can’t do much yet… but putting the battle plan together.