From the time I first read any one of the Little House on the Prairie books I've wanted to live on a small farm and raise chickens (and goats and bees). As fate would have it, I never left the city my family moved to when I was 4 and the only glimpses of farm life I had as a child were the summers I spent in Indiana and Michigan.
Recently when I picked up raw milk at a farm nearby I saw a very large fenced yard filled with chickens. They were scratching at the dirt and clucking at one another. Once in a while one would take off running and stop just as abruptly as she'd started. It reminded me of how much I wanted to raise my own birds.
When my copy of Minnie Rose Lovgreen's Recipe for Raising Chickens came in the mail, I promptly sat down and read it from cover to cover. It turned out to be one of the most entertaining how-to books I've ever read. I giggled many times at the thought of Minnie saying these things to Nancy Rekow, who wrote them down and created this book to share Minnie's invaluable advice with everyone.
Straight-forward and to the point, but with a very sweet and witty tone, Minnie teaches how to raise chickens from which are best for laying to what they should be fed and how to treat the chicks when they find their way out of their egg homes.
This book takes the reader back to a simpler time when antibiotics were not used and chickens were fed what they wanted and raised in a gentle and wholesome way. It renewed in me the desire to raise my own brood of hens!
Even if chicken raising isn't something you've thought about doing, you just might feel differently after reading this. Pick up a copy and share it with your children, too - the simple line drawings are quaint and dear and the entire book was written by hand - no fancy modern typeface here!
Minnie Rose Lovgreen's Recipe for Raising Chickens, Edited by Nancy Rekow & Chaya Siegelbaum, Illustrated by Elizabeth Hutchison Zwick and published by NW Trillium Press is available in bookstores nationwide and online.
Book provided by NW Trillium Press.
