Page 87 - Coffee County

“When they took away our chickens, it liked to kill us,” E.D. Lott stoically said as he went back to that day two years ago when Pilgrim’s Pride closed their Douglas poultry processing plant. E.D. Lott and his wife, Sharree had grown chickens for thirty-two straight years and had just invested their life savings and borrowed money to make a $500,000 upgrade to their poultry houses a year before Pilgrim’s announced they were closing the plant. The Lotts made their living raising chickens and went without income for almost two years. E.D. said without a trace of bitterness, “Most people work all their lives and retire with a pension. The chicken houses were our retirement. We worked all our lives and when we neared retirement we had the rug pulled out from under us.”

The last two years have been a struggle for the Lotts. They cancelled their health insurance and E.D. cashed in his life insurance policy. They moved out of their 100-year-old home that they had moved from the Baker Highway in Douglas to the farm thirty-four years ago into an old traveler camper they had because it was cheaper to heat and cool. They lived off food they put up in the freezer and the little money their grist mill made and E.D.’s social security check.

Rather than being resentful about their plight, the Lotts are extremely grateful for all the support they received from their creditors, the community’s efforts to get Pilgrim’s Pride reopened and Pilgrim’s for reopening and putting chickens back into their houses so they could make