Chicken houses, woodsheds and chopping blocks

     Even the younger generations have heard the clichés: There's a fox in the chicken house, take him out behind the woodshed, whose head is on the chopping block? Chicken houses (technically, coops), woodsheds and chopping blocks were familiar to Eli and Sofia and their children and grandchildren, but it occurs to me that the youngster generations  might not know some of the subtle points behind those clichés.

     Start with the chicken house. When people raised their own chickens, collected the eggs, then ate the tough old chickens when they were no longer productive, people also kept a chicken house and a chicken yard. Their birds weren't confined to cages for life like the birds on commercial farms today. The yard had a gated chicken wire fence around it that was tall enough to restrain chickens from flying away when their wing feathers were trimmed so that they couldn't efficiently get off the ground.  The chicken house stood at the edge of the yard. It had a rectangular footprint, and one end lay outside the fence. It had a door tall enough for humans to walk in and out.  Inside, along each side, were a couple tiers of shelves holding nesting boxes lined with straw for the chickens. At the far end of the chicken house, at floor level, was an opening just large enough for chickens to get in and out.  It could be opened or closed with a panel that slid up or down and was secured with a hook. From  that chicken door was a ramp down into the chicken yard. It was quite an efficient design. When the chickens were outdoors in the yard, a person could walk in the back door, close the chicken door to keep the birds outdoors out of the way as much as possible--maybe distracting them further with a handful of scratch (chicken feed) tossed over the fence- then raid the nest for eggs or muck out the chicken house for manure to apply to the garden.

     What I don't remember is whether the folks closed the chicken door at night when the birds were roosting inside. That would help keep foxes and other predators away. The predators Eli had to trap were fat, well-fed raccoons that got into the chicken yard by sliding under the fence where the trickle of a creek ran through the chicken yard. Of course, as agile as they are, raccoons could also climb over a chicken-wire fence.

     Like a chicken house, every self-sufficient household had its woodshed, another utilitarian design. Its purpose was to provide a roof over stacks of firewood to keep it dry enough to burn all winter. Since slices of logs had to be chopped into wedges small enough to fit into the fire boxes of wood-burning kitchen stoves or warming parlor stoves, or shaved down to kindling, the roof of a woodshed had to be high enough to allow a man to swing an axe or maul.  One large round cut from a stump was set aside to serve as the chopping block. Place a round of wood on the block, raise the axe, whack! Without a chopping block, hitting a wedge of wood with an axe would just as likely drive it into the ground as split it. The chopping block also provided the surface across which you'd stretch the neck of a chicken to cut off its head when it was time to butcher. Then, of course, the corpse would run around for a few moments before it was still--running like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off.  And proverbially, the woodshed is where disciplinarian parent took  the miscreant child  to administer a spanking.

     I remember Eli's woodshed as having a roof on poles, but open air on at least one side and end. It may have had an enclosed portion for storing axes and tools, as well. Johnnie and Vake each built woodsheds at their houses.

     Sandy remembers how Vake built his. She says," My recollection of Grandpa Eli's wood shed was just of posts supported a shed roof, shed meaning a single sloped plane.  There must have been corner braces, otherwise it would have collapsed like a cardboard box does when the ends are removed.  Sam Sampson may have more distinct memories.[He doesn't.]

     Dad constructed a shed roof on the west side of the Berry Lane/Manzanita Street house to shelter firewood.  It was supported on the high side by a ledger beam attached to the house wall, with rafters sloping down to a beam on the low side. There must have been plywood on the rafters although in the olden days it would have been wood boards, spaced for ventilation with wood shakes or shingles on top.  Dad's roof was originally cedar shakes that were later replaced with asphalt or fiberglass shingles with a granular surface, most likely installed over a layer of 15# building felt. Four (guessing) posts held the low side beam up and I suspect that those posts were situated on concrete footing blocks.

     When we moved into Mom & Dad's then vacant house, the original posts were rotting out.  Ken Lewis replaced them when we had a concrete pad poured there, the new posts were supported on steel post bases set in the concrete which was probably thickened at that outer edge to act like a footing. There were plywood gussets at the post tops, acting as braces to the beam.

     I'd say this level of detail is much more than any normal person wants, so you could describe Eli's and Dad's wood sheds like this: "Simple shed roof structures with wood post supports and cedar shingle roofing."Maybe you can even lose a word or two from the above.

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