...I want a farm...Amherst, Dartmouth, Bowdin and Connecticut Wesleyan are going to give me a living next year for a couple of weeks [teaching] in each of them. The rest of the time I shall be clear away from the academic, feeding pigeons hens dogs or anything you advise for the pleasure or the profit in it...I ran away from two colleges in succession once and they took revenge by flattering me back to teach in college. Now I am running away again and it looks as if they would come after me.

--Robert Frost in a letter, May 1926. Quoted in Robert Frost: A Pictorial Chronicle. Kathleen Morrison, 1974. p. 58

Finding the formula for the perfect chicken feed is a quest that produces the same intensity as designing the perfect chicken coop.

Frost wrote a story featuring a farmer obsessed with the question, "What are you feeding?"

This exhibit includes historical materials about the best practices of the time for giving poultry access to the most nutritious food. The final sections include articles describing current USDA research on poultry nutrition and links to the research units working in this area of poultry science.

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Such a fine pullet ought to go
All coiffured to a winter show,
And be exhibited, and win.
The answer is this one has been--

And come with all her honors home.
Her golden leg, her coral comb,
Her fluff of plumage, white as chalk,
Her style, were all the fancy's talk

--Robert Frost, 1937, Excerpt from "A Blue Ribbon at Amesbury"

This exhibit includes materials about raising chickens to show in exhibitions--what was often called "The Fancy."

Although it was more common for chickens to be raised for exhibition than for food at the beginning of the 20th century, this is now a niche hobby. The final section of this exhibit includes a small set of articles describing recent USDA research on exotic chicken breeds.

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And as for the trap nests if you drop in on us unexpectedly which you are cordially invited to do you can satisfy yourself that they are in operation. And if that is not enough you can have {a transcript} [of] any leaf in our egg record book sworn to before a justice of the peace.

-- Robert Frost, personal notebook circa 1903, p. 12, verso (Quoted in Faggen, R. (ed.) The Notebooks of Robert Frost (2006), page 24)

The first of Robert Frost's poultry articles was "Trap Nests." It describes the troubles met by a husband and wife as they start a backyard poultry flock. The couple tries to compel their uncooperative hens into laying by putting them into trap nests. These are structures that keep each chicken confined until she produces an egg.

The story was meant to portray the gap between dreams of easy riches from poultry farming and the difficult realities of actually managing a working--or not working--flock.

Trap nests appear in two other pieces: "The Original and Only" and "Three Phases of the Poultry Industry."

In the fiction piece "The Same Thing Over and Over," a salesmen tries to convince a farmer to subscribe to a poultry magazine. His sales pitch includes all of the recent design elements for modern poultry houses (circa 1903) including recommendations for heating, cooling, cleanliness, and ventilation.

This exhibit includes historical materials about trap nests and other types of poultry architecture. The final sections include articles describing current USDA research on poultry housing and links to the research units working in this area of poultry science.

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I kept farm, so to speak for nearly ten years, but less as a farmer than as a fugitive from the world that seemed to me to 'disallow' me. It was all instinctive, but I can see now that I went away to save myself and fix myself before I measured myself against all creation.

-- Robert Frost, 1915 From a letter to the literary editor of the Boston Evening Transcript, March 22, 1915. (Quoted in Sheehy, D. G., Richardson, M., & Faggen, R. (eds.) The Letters of Robert Frost: Volume 1, 1886 - 1921 (2014), page 12)

Robert Frost came to farming at a difficult period of his life. He had failed to get an undergraduate degree after attending Dartmouth and then Harvard. Frost's three-year old son Elliott had just died months earlier. Finally, he had a wife and daughter with no clear way to either financially support his family or develop the writing career he wanted.

This exhibit includes excerpts from the only non-fiction article written by Frost for The Farm-Poultry. Frost profiled his agricultural mentor: Charlemagne Bricault in the article "Three Phases of the Poultry Industry." Two other local farmers were featured in this piece: Mr. and Mrs. Nichols from Lawrence, Massachusetts and John A. Hall of Atkinson, New Hampshire.

The final sections of this exhibit include monographs on general poultry farming practices of Frost's contemporaries and articles describing current USDA research on poultry farming and links to the research units working in this area of poultry science.

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I'm a teacher more than I am a farmer, but I've been both all the way along. And I've been a newspaperman, too. I've been--you know, American style--I've been a little of everything as I came up with an art--with an art, you see. And one of the things about art is that you have to find a refuge, while you're starting it, from hasty judgments. And farming was one for me. And teaching was another. And newspaper work was another.

-- Robert Frost, From a speech given at Rockhurst College on November 17, 1959 (Quoted in Lathem, E.C. (ed.) Robert Frost Speaking on Campus: Excerpts From His Talks, 1949-1962 (2009), page 112)

Two of Robert Frost's articles address the poultry trade journals of the early 1900s. "The Same Thing Over and Over" describes a salesman's efforts to convince a farmer that the journal he represents is more than a series of articles recycling the same advice without end. "The Question of A Feather" narrates the story of the fictitious journal Hendom and its editor's interaction with a faithful reader.

Both stories capture typical relationships within the trade publication community among writers, editors, advocates, casual readers, and serious practitioners.

This exhibit includes materials about past and current poultry trade publications and resources.

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