When I was a young man and still living in Iowa, for a while the state’s more-or-less official motto was “Iowa – A Place to Grow,” to which wags always replied, “Yes, a place to grow corn, soybeans, pork, and chickens.” Iowa has always been an agricultural state, as I can personally affirm, not only from the years I grew up and lived there but from the fact that I come from a long line of farmers myself.
In Iowa’s rural areas, many folks kept some chickens around. Chickens are great for turning food into meat and eggs. In warm weather they self-forage a lot, and will even hoover up grasshoppers and other pesky bugs; toss them some cracked corn and so on every now and then and you’ve got an effective, mobile, clucking backup protein source. During the Depression, my grandfather kept a huge flock of laying hens, and they not only had eggs and the occasional fryer but made some extra…
