Chicken in the Straw

find Downsville and Dubach en route. Ride through the past into the present.
Highway 151 swings through small towns, churchyards, pine woods, cypress bayous,
pastures sprinkled with cows and horses, and tucked into the landscape -
chicken houses, farm houses, houses of loggers and pipeline workers.

We live here because we love the land and it supports us. You see evidence
of the farmstead chicken yards which supplied Sunday feasts to families in the 1800s,
farmers expanded in the 1900s, and have become today's broiler industry backbones.
Half Louisiana's broiler farms are in our backyards - they green our pastures and economy.
You see woodlands and managed forests, today's version of the pine woods which first
attracted trappers and crosscut loggers. Though our virgin forests were gone by the 1920s,
continuous reforestation feeds the demand for lumber, paper products, and pine straw
mulch. In 2007, Louisiana's biggest agricultural industries are forest products and poultry.

North central Louisianans today are descendants of the men and women who settled here
and whose children now attend local schools. We stayed home and built churches;
family histories remain on keystones and grave markers. We traded with our neighbors,
so you see some old storefronts and porch stoops. The road has changed some, but
the path is the same. We invite you to stop a while for a glass of sweet tea in Calhoun,
play a line of dominoes at the store in Downsville, celebrate with Dubach at the
Louisiana Chicken Festival, jam with Bluegrass regulars in Arcadia or find a
familiar name under the trees of a churchyard along the way.

[This page is in progress.]
If you're on the road and need to leave word, or
if you're a traveler and want to comment contact:
ScenicByway151@gmail.com