Chickens And Ducks And Turkeys, Oh My!
That is the major part of the business conducted at Cackle Hatchery on West Commercial every day. Throw in some geese and lots of eggs from all these animals, plus educational materials about them, and even medication for sick chicks, and you have a growing (no pun intended) and sometimes noisy 24 hour business 7 days a week. You can even feather your own nest with home décor from the in-house store on the premises, or buy unique gifts for your friends who like to collect and decorate with fowl items and themes.
Cackle Hatchery (don’t you just love that name?) recently celebrated its
75th year in business.
The very backbone of small-town America is its family-owned
businesses, and Cackle Hatchery epitomizes all the good things about
the “mom and pop” operations which dot America’s landscapes,
especially in the Midwest, as well as the traditional values and work
ethic instilled in them.
Clifford and Lena Smith started the business in 1936. In 1964 their son, Clifton and his wife Nancy took over the business, which is now into its third generation with son, Jeff, who excels in sales and marketing.
Nancy said their children learned very early how valuable and fragile
eggs are. She recounts the time their daughter Debbie was doing her
chores of gathering goose eggs after school. Debbie was about ten
years old at the time. She hated the geese and apparently the
feeling was mutual. (Nancy tells me that geese can sense when you
are scared of them and they will come after you.)
This particular day, Debbie was running with a full basket of eggs to
get away from the geese, and she fell coming in the door. Several eggs were broken and Debbie called her mom at the store, very
upset and worried that she would get in trouble because she knew how
valuable the eggs were. She didn’t get in trouble of course, but this
story illustrates the work ethics of responsibility and accountability the
Smith family modeled for their children.
As many small business owners know, there are lots of ups and downs in
starting a business from “scratch”.
Nancy told me about the time they “laid an egg” by plucking the geese to sell their down and make some extra money during off season.
The geese didn’t like being plucked so the Smiths put socks over the
heads of the geese and held them between their legs to get the job
done.
Nancy made huge muslin sacks to hang from the rafters to dry
out the down, so it could then be shipped to a company in Colorado.
The down was shipped by railroad car in huge burlap bags furnished by
that company. The company required them to have a minimum of 1000
pounds of down, and it took Nancy and her family 6 to 8 weeks, working
every evening, to get that much.
Nancy’s children told her they never wanted to see a goose
again, and that was the last time they tried that job.
I love that story because it reminded me of a riddle which stumped me for years. As a child I checked out every riddle book in the library and memorized them so I could annoy all the adults I knew by asking them riddles. But there was one riddle that I didn’t “get” until a lot later in life and it worried me over the years because I didn’t know what it meant. The riddle was “How do you get down from a horse?” And the answer was “You don’t get down from a horse, you get down from a goose.”
Having neither geese nor horses in my life experience at that time, I
didn’t know what “down” was, and therefore couldn’t understand why the
answer was supposed to be funny.
Lebanon is proud of the Smith family at Cackle Hatchery. Clifton and
Nancy have been able to provide employment to lots of people over the
years. I’m sure Clifford and Lena would be so proud and pleased to
see the business they started many years ago develop into an industry
that now occupies most of the north side of the 400 block of West
Commercial in downtown Lebanon.
© Joan Rowden Hart 2018
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