Matheson house in Albion Cross, rented from Dundas Farms (photo HistoricPlaces.ca)

I will never forget the day we served diner guests right in the middle of chicken plucking.

When I first moved to PEI in 1975, I got the “back to the land” kick big time. I rented a farm house and five acres in Albion Cross, Kings County and promptly set about to learn some lessons in farming.

The farm had long been abandoned by the previous owner. There was an orchard, a one acre fenced field and five dilapidated old buildings.

Old Mac Matheson down the road thought a Jersey cow made a good start at farming so I bought one from the local cattle buyer Raymond Downe.

I was instantly immersed in the winter chores of feeding, watering and cleaning up after her twice a day.

When not hobby farming, my real job was bookkeeping for local businesses from Dundas to Souris and back.

A client suggested that chickens would keep the cow company and the cow would keep them warm. I got 36 pullets or baby chicks and a few laying hen chicks from Rayner’s. That meant more barn work keeping them alive in the freezing cold shed that was the only thing standing from the barn.

Somehow through disease and vermin, I kept those chickens alive and most of them made it through the spring and summer.

Late in August, Mac thought the chickens were ready for the freezer. He gave me a kitchen table course in how to dispatch them to their fate.

Barnyard chickens (photo CBC)

So one Saturday afternoon, I got myself organized to put 30 chickens in the freezer. You should not try this at home.

We put the kettle on the propane stove outside. My ex-wife was very unhappy with the process and not engaged, other than to heckle from the porch.

I rounded up the first chicken which seemed to tell the whole roost that the jig was up.  Suddenly the chicken coop was a mass of flying chickens.

There are some unsavory parts to this job like wringing of chicken necks and cutting off of heads. Yes chickens do run around the yard afterwards which only made more work for a guy with a bad leg.

After a rough start that seemed to last hours, I did get the hang of it including scalding the chicken to make the chicken plucking easier.

While a chore, it did seem to move along like a hesitant production line after awhile.

One of my bright ideas was to hang the plucked chickens on the clothes line to dry.

The ex agreed to help with the plucking, then quit round about the time the flies started to gather.

I was in a race with flies and decided to stop killing chickens and just finish.

She agreed to bag and freeze the chickens, then quit that too.

At 4 PM I had a few chickens in the freezer and a car pulled in the driveway.

It was the Phys Ed teacher from Souris. I had invited him and his wife for supper that Saturday night and forgotten the invitation.

The couple were well bred people from India and not used to PEI farm life, let alone farm life done wrong.

They walked down the driveway while I frantically tried to clean up the mess.

The teacher smiled weakly as I apologized for the butcher shop gone mad scene. His gracious wife could only look away.

“Go inside and I’ll finish up,” I said acting as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Just another day on the farm.

Yes, just another day on the farm with the hobby farmer in the middle of a disaster.

Somehow, we got through that supper, despite the rancid smell of chickens that hung in the air

Our guests hurriedly ate a tiny bit of their food and left in a flurry of apologies.

When I questioned the Mac the next day on what went wrong he told me – never kill chickens on a hot day and never kill more than you can handle.

I should have taken part two of the chicken plucking course.

The teacher and his wife never came back for another dinner invitation.

Yesterday, I saw the teacher at the hospital. Still remembering that day in August, I asked him if he remembered me. No, he said.

Later he came back with a coffee to the waiting room and asked me my name. When I told him, he started to talk about moving to Charlottetown, retiring, and his three daughters getting married.

He never mentioned the chickens and neither did I.

For more on the historical house we rented in Albion Cross, see HistoricPlace.ca.