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The people of Jamestown brought 500 chickens to the New World.
If the Jamestown people had five hundred chickens flocking around their acres there must have been an abundance of eggs. However, as it appears that the chickens were left on their own, for the Jamestown folks to go in search of their hidden nests of eggs might have been more of a chore than they cared to undertake. More likely than not, the wild meat slinking around, such as the skunk and fox just to name a couple, lived high on the hog on chicken eggs and baby chick--if the eggs laid around that long. Although around Jamestown wild fruits and berries abound for the picking, in the first years in Virginia few if any orchards were planted. However, by 1656 "Orchards innumerable were planted and preserved." The site of row upon row of flowering fruit trees in spring may have brought back a fond thought or two of dear old England. The major intent, however, for growing domestic fruit was not for the eating, but for the drinking. Granted typhoid fever was a serious problem in early Jamestown due to the drinking of water from wells that were easily polluted, due to a high water table and wells dug to shallow, but the English, and other Europeans, had a grand taste for alcohol. For an idea of how the folks of Jamestown cooked the food at hand, here are some recipes you might want to try. Deer SausageMix together one pound of ground deer meat with about one half pound of ground pork or pork sausage. Add one-fourth of a tablespoon of salt, one-eighth-table spoon of pepper, one-half tablespoon of sage. Mix all of this into the two meats with some bacon or pork fat. There's no amount give on the fat but it is probably put in there to help hold the whole thing together and compensate for the lack of fat on the deer meat. This can all be stuffed in to casings, cleaned entrails from pigs, usually, if you are doing it a butchering time. Otherwise, just form the meat into patties and fry it in whatever grease you have on hand. Bacon grease would be best but any other such as cow, bear, etc. will do. Dining in Virginia continued.
The copyright of the article Jamestown Chickens and Orchards in American History is owned by Mary Trotter Kion. Permission to republish Jamestown Chickens and Orchards in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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