If the nursery or nursing business ever stalls out for Debbie Lawrence and Kim Rushing, they can take their show on the road. Both are natural comedians, who share a passion for an irresistible and timeless subject: chickens.
The two tag-teamed the subject at Wednesday’s Table Talk at the public library. Judging by the laughter and disappearance of 25 catalogs Lawrence brought along from a chicken supplier, the girls found a receptive audience.
Lawrence led off with a PowerPoint presentation while standing at a podium bearing a handmade sign: “We are not chicken experts, we just (heart) chickens.”
She began by showing an old black and white photograph of her grandmother, a serious woman holding a large white chicken.
“This is what I knew as a child,” Lawrence would later say. “This (raising chickens) is a way to be closer to my grandmother.”
It is doubtful Grandma called her White Plymouth Rocks Lois and Lola or had a pair of Barred Plymouth Rocks named Thelma and Louise as does Lawrence.
Lawrence says her chickens become her therapists when her day gets too hectic. Outside her “Chicken Cathedral” built alongside her horse barn, she keeps red chairs where she sits and listens to her birds cluck.
“It is the most calming feeling to sit there and listen to them,” said Lawrence. “I love them.”
Rushing, a physical therapist, said she became interested after hearing her older patients talk about their chickens.
“There was such a relationship between my women patients and their chickens,” she said.
For her presentation, Rushing brought chickens she had washed the night before. Following instructions she found on Google, Rushing put her hens in a five-gallon bucket of water and agitated. Then she dried them with her hair drier (naturally). Her birds were clean and well-behaved. Perhaps they were still shell-shocked from their laundering.
“Put a box of baby chicks in the lap of an Alzheimer’s patient, and they smile; they talk,” said Rushing.
Other than the therapeutic benefits mentioned above, fresh eggs from healthy, happy and unfettered chickens are more nutritious and better tasting, say the women. Lawrence gets six to seven eggs a day from her 10 hens.
Debbie says most of her knowledge of chicken husbandry came from a book, “Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens” and the magazine “Backyard Poultry.”
“They’re easy,” Rushing said. “You will never regret getting them. They are good for the soul.”
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
