Potholders and Chickens (another Ho[ch]stetler mother)

First of all, I do not remember every detail of this story. However, a good story is not created from “I think’s . . .” So I will include details. If they happen to be off a bit, they do not affect the heart of the story.

Do kids still make potholders using small, square looms? Well, my friends and I, and perhaps others in the family, had made them. Some we sold; some we gave away. We had plenty to use at home.

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-----------------County Road

Here is the layout of the property. The house sat up on a bank. The county road ran in front of the house, at a lower level. The drive bridged the difference in altitude between the house and the road. The house faced the road, and there was a little-used entrance on that side. The main entrance was at the side of the house.

One day, while we were working outside at the side of the house, a stranger came up over the bank toward us. This was very unusual. We hadn’t even known there was anyone around. The stranger had not pulled into the drive, but had just stopped along the side of the road in front of the house. The stranger was a woman.

She had some pot holders, and asked if she could exchange some potholders for a chicken. Mom whispered to me to go to the freezer and put 3 chickens in a bag for the woman.

Why in the world did we need more potholders, I wondered.

I was fumbling around in our “grocery store” when Mom came in to speed things along.

“Why are we giving her 3 chickens? She only asked for one. And these potholders aren’t any different from the ones we’ve been making.”

“We don’t need the potholders, but they need food.” Mom added a package of frozen strawberries as well.

When they made the exchange, it was pretty obvious the woman was walking away with a heavy bag. We saw there were other people in the car, too. I wondered if they were living in the car, or camping outside. I hoped they had a way of keeping the chickens frozen if they couldn’t use all of them at once.

OK, so she met a need when asked. But I’d like to give a little more context here. Just how did those chickens end up in our freezer? The grocery store?

First we bought little peeps, and raised them to an age when they were good for meat. Then we would have a day of harvest. A day of hard work, and not all that pleasant. Kill the chickens by chopping their heads off. Hold them until they finished jerking so they wouldn't run headless all over the yard. Dunk them in boiling water and pluck off their feathers. Singe them and pluck out the pinfeathers. Take them in the house and cut them up and wash them. Wrap them in freezer paper and then put them in the freezer. And what was for lunch? Fried chicken, of course.

And where did the frozen strawberries come from? Mom would buy flats of strawberries when they were in season. Then we would wash and slice them, removing the stems. We would then place them in cardboard freezer containers and she would pour a homemade syrup over them. And into the freezer they would go.

So those chickens and strawberries represented patience and hard work, diligence and planning ahead. But they also represented God’s goodness to our family. We always had food to eat – good quality and as much as we wanted. She wisely saw that she could be a channel of God’s blessing so that another family's needs could be met, too.