This is Brimfield week, when a tiny town in the middle of nowhere hosts one of the largest flea markets on the East Coast. Pastures become fields of booths, filled with just about anything old, dusty and damaged, precious and antique, and useless and weird. There are a only a few booths selling reproductions, and too many vendors selling repros without realizing it. You have to be careful. Prices can be very good, or way out of line. It’s that sort of place. I love it.

With so much to look at, it’s hard to sift through it all and find that one object of your desire. It’s good to go with an open mind and to stumble on something unexpected. But, it doesn’t hurt to have a focus. Mine, of course, is chickens. It seemed like everywhere I turned, there was something related to poultry.

Within the first ten minutes, I found these paper feed bags, which I though quite fitting, what with my previous post and the giveaway. They were only $2 each!

Those came home with me, but much didn’t. Like this feeder:

Just seeing and photographing it was enough for me. Who knew that feeders like this existed?

I liked seeing this globe waterer, too.

There were toys.

and games.

There were plenty of vintage items from Easters past.

I particularly liked this dapper chick.

He didn’t come home with me, but this plastic hen did.

The one item that I wanted, but did not buy, was this windmill weight. I love it’s modern lines, and the fact that the windmill could have had a boring block balancing weight, but had this rooster instead. Useful and quirky is right up my alley.

Should I go back tomorrow and see if it’s still there?

Feeding chickens is so easy. You go to the local feed store and purchase a 50 pound bag of laying hen feed. You put the pellets into a hanging galvanized container which the chickens peck at throughout the day. It’s good for your hens to get greens, too, but they’ll stay quite healthy when the bulk of their diet is from those tidy pellets.

It hasn’t always been like this. In the 19th century you couldn’t purchase bags of complete rations. My favorite chicken manual is a charming little book titled The Biggle Book of Poultry. It first came out in 1895 and has this to say about chicken feed: “On every egg farm there should be a large boiler or steam cooker for cooking vegetables and making compounds of meat, ground grain and vegetables.” That makes me appreciate being able to buy a bag of pellets at the Agway!

By the 1920s grain mills were marketing bags of chicken feed.

It wasn’t hard to convince the small flock owner of the convenience of this product. By the Depression, competition for customers was fierce and money was tight. Cloth sacks were printed with patterns that the frugal homemaker turned into aprons, dresses and curtains.

But, today’s feed bags are made out of either paper, which gets thrown out, or plastic which can not go into the recycling bin (at least not here, it’s a type of plastic that my center doesn’t take.) But, the graphics on the bags are vivid, and the material is sturdy and waterproof and yet flexible. I loathe to throw them out. So, I turn the feed bags into tote bags. Some I sell at the local farmers market. One I am giving away here!

Note the grommets to strengthen the straps.

To enter, simply tell me here what you would put in the bag. You can enter a second time on FaceBook – simply click “like” on this post in FB. You can enter a THIRD time by forwarding the post to your FB friends. If you’re not a FaceBook friend, do become one! I post photos there that you don’t see at HenCam. I’ve got a busy week – it’s Brimfield again, and I’ll be looking for more finds to post on The Vintage Hen – so I’ll let this contest run through Friday, July 13. The contest will close at 9 PM EDT. I value my international friends, so, yes, I’ll ship this to anywhere in the world! Good-luck!

Up-date- this contest is closed and was won by Stephanie in AZ.

When I was in grade school, my mother made my lunch every day. Tuna fish sandwiches on white bread. A pickle spear. Potato chips. A pink marshmallow covered cake (not homemade.) Sometimes it was bologna and pickle sandwiches. Sometimes meatloaf. With ketchup. You get the idea. These lunches were squishy and smelly. This was in the days before plastic zipper bags. The dill pickle was slipped into a wax paper bag that was, maybe if my mother remembered, twisted closed. The sandwiches, too,were wrapped in wax paper. Then it all went into a thin, inexpensive, small brown paper bag, which was too full to fold over. My name was written on with a marker. By the time I got off of the school bus at 7:45 the edges of the bag were damp. By the time I fished it out of my desk for lunch there was a soggy hole in the bottom of the bag. I don’t know why I didn’t have a lunch box and tidy Tupperware containers. Other kids had tins with the Monkees embossed on them, or Batman, or Flipper the dolphin. I had a small, crumpled, paper bag. This went on for years, until, gratefully in junior high, I was allowed to buy cafeteria food. Having lunch in a school dining hall with several hundred kids was horrifying enough, but bringing an odiferous, falling apart paper bag to the communal table would have made the experience unbearable. How I appreciated getting my meal handed to me on a neat tray!  I no longer wished for a lunch box. Anyway, at this point, lunch boxes were not cool.

Recently I bought this lunch box. I wonder how different my life would have been if I had carried my salami sandwiches to school in it.

It would not have made me instantly popular, and I still probably would have eaten by myself, but I would have liked having this goat for company.

I would have told stories to this dog.

I didn’t know any real chickens, but I would have enjoyed these. I would have named the horse.

I wonder who carried this to school. Was he or she proud of it? Or, is it possible that the child who owned this box wished for a brown paper bag that could be tossed right into the trash so that nothing had to be carried back home?

Did you have a lunchbox?

Here in America, we have a holiday called July Fourth. Of course, there’s a July 4 everywhere, but for some reason (I’m sure lexicographers have studied this) we rarely call it Independence Day. It’s simply The Fourth and it’s meant to be a celebration of our start as a nation. We put up flags. We have parades. Politicians pontificate. We eat BBQ.

I rather like the flags. Ours is a cheerful and bold red, white and blue. The number of stars changed as the country expanded and added states. But it still looks much like the ones on this Wisconsin poultry farm’s porch, around 1915.

"Mother" on a Wisconsin poultry farm

I live in a little town that loves The Fourth. We have an Old Home Day celebration on a Saturday before or after. Like all good Fourth events, there’s pomp and circumstance. The Honored Citizen, and Conservationist of the Year are announced. There’s a corn shucking contest (the corn is cooked later at the Fireman’s BBQ.) There’s an art show and pet show and a dunking booth.

What makes my little town the best town for celebrating The Fourth is that while we have all of these classic events, what we don’t allow (not anywhere in town that day) are politicians. None kissing babies or asking for signatures or speechifying.

We do have a parade. A parade without politicians. We have a parade with homegrown floats, a few vintage cars, a town hearse (this year pulled by two Belgian draft horses!) AND we have a librarian drill team. The Fourth doesn’t get much better than this.

Happy Fourth everyone!

In the 1880s cigarettes began to be sold in boxes. A piece of cardboard was inserted into the package to keep it stiff. Even back then admen were looking to cover every surface with marketing, and so the cigarette card was born. The cards were printed in large sets and people avidly collected them. People still do. I own a set of poultry cards. They’re tiny things, just 1 1/2 inches by 2 3/4 inches.

As much as I enjoy the bright graphics, what I really like are the poems on the back. Most are oddly worded and sort of, kind of rhyme. Looking at this card, you’d think that “E is for Eggs” but it’s not. Read the back. “E is for Eating.” I quite agree!