I helped as best I could. I don’t remember anyone else helping my father Otec. We came to have four chicken houses and about 4000 chickens. That was a lot. We picked eggs three sometime four times a day. We did this to minimize breakage in the nests. The chicken houses had to be cleaned of the manure of course. The manure under the roosting areas was much easier to shovel and haul to the manure barn than were the alleys. They packed down hard and we had to use scrapers to loosen it up before shoveling it into the wheelbarrow. It was my job to haul the wheelbarrow to the manure barn. I would take a running start and get the wheelbarrow as high up the pile as I could.
The sawmill was only about a half a mile away. We would go there on a regular basis to get free sawdust and shavings when shavings were available. These were used in the chicken houses in the alleys to help later on with the cleaning and scraping of the alleys. The citrus growers would come regularly to buy the manure for their trees.
In the summer, the temperature was above 90 and so was the humidity. Cleaning the chicken coops was a really hot and smelly job, the more so in this environment. It would have been hot and smelly even without the heat and humidity, since chicken manure generates a lot of heat and ammonia. We went bare chested most of the time and had dark tans. It’s a wonder that most of us did not come down with skin cancer. We have marveled that we all did not die at early ages of some serious respiratory ailments, given all the dust that was associated with cleaning the houses and chicken farming in general. We also used a lot of dangerous products on the farm such as spraying with creosote, pesticides like Chlordane, and using arsenic on ant hills. At the 41 drive-in each car was systematically sprayed with DDT for mosquito control. (One time a lady working at one of the dinners at the hall, sprayed around the kitchen and on the food with bug spray and many people became very ill.)
We fed chickens about every other day. They ate mash, scratch, oyster shell, grit and oats. When we had lots of leftover milk from the two cows, we would feed that, leftover buttermilk, as well as leftover cottage cheese with the mash. The chickens really loved it. Matka made the cottage cheese. It was my chore to churn the butter. I wish I had that butter churn now but don’t know what happened to it. Many farmers put lights in the chicken houses. Otec never did that. We also fed molasses for some reason. Beside cows we also had pigs, goats, geese, cows, dogs, cats. The geese made excellent “watch dogs.”
Most of Masaryktown had windmills and so did we. There were many various designs and configurations. Years later, I never did find the windmill photo description in a catalog or on the internet. It was my job to shut it down when it filled and overflowed. When it did overflow it was actually a treat to get a cold shower on those hot Florida days. There was a float value indicator on the outside of the windmill indicating how full it was or not. It was always dicey when there was no wind and the windmill got on the empty side. To overcome this anxiety the next stage of technology was an electric pump and pump jack.
We helped each other out with farm activities, such as vaccinating the chickens, when that chore was needed. They were vaccinated when they came out of the brooder house and had been moved to the chicken houses. This job was a lot of work but fun because it was also a social evening with snacks offered when the vaccinating was completed.”
As a town of Slovak chicken farmers, we raised chickens for eggs. The eggs would be picked up by the Wayne Feed Company. Later the eggs were sold via the co-op to PUBLIX supermarkets. The eggs were “picked” – everyone in Masaryktown picked eggs. Whereas the correct term is probably gathered.
At first we washed the eggs but then we switched to sandpaper. They were weighed one at a time on a single scale. I still have that scale. Later we bought an electric-mechanical egg grader which also weighed eggs for size. Eggs would roll down a ramp over a lamp for candling to spot blood spots or cracks, and then mechanical cups would pick up an egg and take it to weighing stations, the first station was extra large. If the egg weighed enough it would trip the balance and roll down a ramp to be packed into the extra large egg crate. The next station was for large eggs, then medium, then small, maybe even peewees or pullet eggs.
One thing I really hated about picking eggs was the risk of being pecked by the chickens or getting splinters under my fingernails from the rough nesting wood. That happened at least once and Dr. Harvard in Brooksville had to cut into the nail to get the splinter out. It hurt like hell.
We had some regular customers for extra large eggs, this same family loved white meat which we really did not care for much so we saved it for them when they came for the eggs. We also sold cracked eggs at a reduced price. We had a freezer and froze a lot of fryers, broilers etc. These were the roosters that the “sexist” missed when the day old chicks arrived at the brooder house.
We had watering pans with float valves which automatically filled with water. The pans needed to be cleaned every evening. I cleaned chicken houses, helped with repairs around the farm. I never did learn to milk the cows. Churning butter was also one of my many weekly chores. I would liked to have had the butter churn. I don’t know what happened to it. I did help my father castrate pigs, though not sure I really knew what was happening. I also saw a calf being born but my mother told me to stay away. Not sure when I put two and two together…
John Bartko, Ph.D. is a former statistician for the National Institute of Health. In his youth, he was a Masaryktown Beseda dancer as well as chicken farmer. We are thankful for the memories he has shared with us.