Long before corporate-style chicken farming, there was Minnie Rose Lovgreen. Born in 1888, she didn’t know about the “necessities” of giving her chickens antibiotics. She probably thought arsenic was a poison and not a legitimate addition to chicken feed. When it came to raising chickens, her motto was “The main thing is to keep them happy.” Her book, Minnie Rose Lovgreen’s Recipe for Raising Chickens, first came out in 1975. Now in its third edition, this downhome guide is a must for anyone getting back to basics and raising their own chickens.

The guide is quirky and old-fashioned, just the sort of thing for sitting down a spell with a cup of tea in the evening after putting the chickens to bed. If you’ve got Bantams, Ms. Lovgreen would be proud, as they’re natural mothers in her estimation. Her book explains in her plain talking over-the-fence tone how to raise chickens in practical terms. It’s kind of hard not to imagine her sitting on a porch rocker or at her kitchen table telling you the hows and whys of poultry. The book is even printed in a handwritten font and contains sweet homey looking sketches of how a hen sits on her eggs, say, or how hens gather around their feed.

The book is only 31 pages long, but the advice is so straightforward and the style so unique that I’d be darned if I wouldn’t be out buying chicks right now if I weren’t trapped in suburbia with neighbors who would probably complain about the clucking and the sudden appearance of a coop in my yard.

If you have chickens, if you’ve ever thought about having chickens, or if you just plain love that down home country goodness, then you’ll adore Minnie Rose Lovgreen’s Recipe for Raising Chickens.