A Nine-Year-Old’s View of Ranch Life
A young Richland girl writes a candid, humorous account of her first encounter with farm life after moving from the Alaskan frontier.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The little story given below was written by a small girl, Miss Hester Quiner, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Quiner, of Richland, and as the little lady is only nine years old, it seems a pretty good start on the literary ladder. Miss Hester is a genuine “sourdough” and “musher,” having been taken into the wilds of Alaska mining camps at the age of two months and spending practically her whole life there. The story we give was written a few weeks after arriving in Richland to make her home on a big ranch and was her very first experience with hens and chicks: One morning, bright and early, Mrs. Hen laid her 15th egg and then began to set. But it was a long and dreary month for Mrs. Hen. At last she heard “peep, peep,” and out came the little chicks. “Oh, my, but they were pretty; one white one and all the rest black.” Mother Hen took her sunbonnet and said to her chicks, “Come along, my children, we are going to make our home.” Along came the little chicks, peep, peep, as they went. By and by Mother Hen found a little place in some alfalfa and there she made her home. She put her sunbonnet in the corner and took the little chicks’ wraps off and they played around watching their mother scratching. It was lots of fun. Day after day they played, getting stronger all the time but at last they grew up and went away so that all Mother Hen could do was to lay eggs again.
“Day after day they played, getting stronger all the time but at last they grew up and went away so that all Mother Hen could do was to lay eggs again.”
Richland has transformed from a quiet agricultural community where children chronicled farm life to a global center of science and technology. Hester Quiner's charming, slightly cynical observation about the cycle of farm life provides a rare, grounded look at the childhood experiences of the families who settled the Tri-Cities before the Hanford era.
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