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Springtime on a Colorado Homestead

© Mary Trotter Kion

On the Great Plains homesteads were still being claimed as late into the new century as 1910.

When Walter Attebery staked his claim in Colorado near Shawnee he was only twenty-one. His bride, May, was just a few months shy of her own twenty-first birthday. Life on their homestead was made more difficult that normal with the death of their first child. May, finding her self once more, “with child” returned to Missouri until after their second child, a girl they called Maxine, was born. Walter stayed in Colorado to care for the homestead, making do as best he could.

It was springtime in Colorado and life was renewing itself. The garden flourished under Walter’s care as surely his livestock did. Tending the brooding hens, that is the setting of them on clutches of eggs to be hatched, was of the least effort of the multitude of chores Walter had to do. But this, in itself, presented a problem.

Walter set all his clucking hens on clutches of a dozen eggs or so, to do there own work which takes about 20 days. After that length of time the baby chicks peck their way into the wide world. The problem Walter faced was one that stemmed from a habit of never wasting anything. Walter was faced with 12 eggs, nicely fertilized due to the administrations and attentions of a brightly-feathered announcer of Colorado sunrises. This strutting proud personage was referred to by a name traditionally reserved for a family member of the Irish Setter persuasion. However, in this instance the name “Old Red” referred to the rooster in residence.

Here Walter was with all of his hens happily employed and earning their keep. Also, here was Walter with a clutch of fertile eggs with no hen to happily hatch them. And over there was Old Red, strutting around, eating himself full, and temporarily unemployed except for his noisome announcement each morn of the sun rising, a reoccurring occurrence that anyone conscious could easily detect.

Walter had an idea, and Old Red’s life of leisure was in jeopardy. Perhaps the rooster watched unconcerned as Walter went about his chores, which now included sawing a few boards down to size and the collecting of nails. A couple of hinges cut from a piece of rawhide were also on the chore list. When Walter had all the materials collected, including his hammer, he toted them to the hen yard where he proceeded to hammer and saw.