BIRDS: We were talking to Ormsby resident Andy Heffner on Thursday, and he told us he “saw four robins today in the yard.”
He explained his wife had more than 300 sunflowers in the yard she grew just to attract the birds, and put some flower heads out for the birds to eat from.
Andy was looking to see what kind of birds were out there, and he saw several that were less unusual for this time of year: Two cardinals, juncos, titmice, chickadees and sparrows. “And a chipmunk,” he added.
He was not expecting the robins, as they usually head south around the beginning of September, he explained.
While we’re on the subject of birds, Andy told us his grandmother raised birds to sell to local restaurants.
Back in the 1940s, she ran Bishes Poultry on Hill Street in Bradford.
“She had several coops, and I think 9,000 chickens,” he said, though he noted the birds were coming and going all the time so the number was not always the same.
His grandmother also sold turkeys, ducks and eggs. She had exclusive contracts with businesses such grand establishments as the Emery Hotel, the Option House and Hotel Holley.
She had lived in Shinglehouse but came to Bradford with her husband so he could work in the oil fields.
Andy recalls his grandmother calling his mother to say peeps were hatching from eggs she had in an incubator. “We lived on Rochester Street. We’d beeline up there and watch through the window. That was a miracle to watch them.”
“She loved kids,” he said of his grandmother. Readers might recall we talked in Friday’s column about how she was a Sunday school superintendent who used to throw Halloween parties for local children.
Andy said when he was 7 his grandmother started a club through the church called the Sunshine Club for children ages 8 through 18.
Among the club activities were crafts to benefit church people doing work elsewhere. Girls would sew items to send to missionaries. Meanwhile, boys would make things in his grandfather’s woodshop, which would be sold to raise money to send to missionaries.
Andy recalls getting a book through the church called “The Golden Deed,” and every week the children had to do a good deed for someone. The person with the most good deeds at the end of the year received a Bible.
“She was all for getting kids into the church,” Andy said of his grandmother.
