In the Chicken Coop

For my family history class, we were encouraged to get to know more about our ancestors than just their birth and death dates. I was reminded that my Great Grandma Palmer recorded a bunch of her life stories on tape before she died. After she died, my family would occasionally listen to them for family home evening. I looked back, and here are a couple of my favorites.

My grandma was a master gardner, and she had a favorite hoe. She'd take that thing with her every time she went outside and get the weeds out of her flowers. That hoe was like her best friend. And one day it broke. She was devastated. That hoe had been through a lot of gardening with her! So she kept the stick, and used it as her walking stick from then on. And she bought a new hoe. 

And I remember that walking stick, because my brother and I used to play with it all the time. We played with the new hoe too. I didn't know the significance of the stick until after she died, though.

And when my grandma was little, she used to go to the chicken coop every now and then to get some eggs and take them to the local store. She could trade them for sweets. (I really wish that the world was like that now. I mean, you can't trust anyone like that anymore.)

Gardening and chicken coops just seem to be engrained in my mind as part of my Great Grandma Palmer's legacy.

When my grandma and grandpa (that's how I knew them, not as great grandparents, but just another set of grandparents) were a young married couple, they'd been out, and when they got home my grandpa went out to check on the chickens before he went to bed. My grandma either didn't know this, or forgot, and she locked the door and went to bed. Well, my grandpa came back and tried to get in the house, but it was locked, and he couldn't wake her up!

It was a cold night, and since he couldn't get in the house, he slept in the chicken coop! My grandma felt terrible when she discovered him there in the morning, sleeping with the chickens to keep warm. She laughed about it when she told the story, though.

I miss my great grandma, but I am grateful for the legacy she left behind.