Beautiful prickly pear blossoms - - but watch those sharp spikes!

June is in full swing here in Middle Tennessee: as I drive through The Shire in the mornings, the landscape is awash in the kind of gorgeous, lush green that used to make my eyes hurt when I arrived on visits from dry, golden California years ago. The fields and sprawling yards are overflowing with flowers of every color, but in early to mid June the beautiful deep orange of our native Tiger lily dominates the color palette, accented with the delicate white, politely bobbing heads of Queen Anne’s Lace.

Delicate Queen Anne’s Lace

I have always loved the Tiger lily, and adding to its beauty is the plain fact that it’s a useful edible plant. Every part of this lily is edible, and you can find something of use in every season. The flowers can be picked clean of pistil and stamen, rinsed clean and eaten as they are or used as small wraps for other foods like fresh, cool tuna salad. Somewhere in my recipe collection are directions on using Tiger lily blooms to wrap a dish that was baked. The roots may be harvested in winter and eaten rather like potatoes or other tubers. For those interested in keeping land that will sustain you, the Tiger lily is a great choice—and it will naturally spread each year all by itself.

In a small corner of my yard sits an old bucket with a prickly pear cactus I dug from the yard to save our riding mower tires (and our feet!). This is another great Tennessee native plant that yields edible parts; the flat pads of the low-growing cactus may be peeled and prepared in much the same way as green peppers. My preference is to peel and chop them, sauté them lightly in a pan with a few veggies and incorporate them into a nice omelette as I used to have at a dusty old cafe in the dry California Salinas Valley many years ago.

Despite a late start this year, the vegetable garden has taken off. We already have more zucchini than we can possibly eat, and the crookneck squash is just starting to ripen. I imagine I’ll have to dredge up some creative ideas for preparing it this summer so we don’t get tired of it too quickly! The tomatoes will be late, but there looks to be plenty of fruit. We did not use the cages this year, so it remains to be seen whether the deer will take more than their fair share.

Young Louis XIV is growing bigger by the day - - and how about those lovely feathered feet?

My beautiful, rare booted bantam chicks are growing by the day. I have learned from experience now that self-hatched chicks are just friendlier than any I could buy from elsewhere. Having them imprinted on me—and handling them every day—makes for the sweetest, most trusting little chickens! The booted bantams will ride around on my shoulder, and my favorite little cockerel Louis XIV likes to just ride around with me all afternoon as I work in the yard. He rules from the throne of my shoulder, chirping away at all the other birds and issuing orders about his little kingdom. His father was quite a handsome fellow, so I expect great things from my little monarch. His namesake lived a long, productive life with plenty of female company, and I hope for the same for my Louis.

My young Australorp cockerel gives me a sideways glance as he struts on by

The first of my two black Australorp cockerels just went with his pullet to live at a lovely farmstead nearby. As much as I’d love to keep the last one (young Mick) as a young husband to my Dame Edna, I’m afraid that my suburban neighbors would not love him as much as I do—so off he will soon go to live on a farm in the country. I did not realize how hard it would be to sell off my chicks! I am so fond of them all, and I know each of them as individuals. This makes it quite difficult when the time comes for them to leave. This was the original plan—to gain the experience of hatching, to keep a few pullets for myself, and to sell the rest—but while moving along smoothly, the plan stings a bit. We’ll see how I feel about this next year.

Aunt Bea terrorizing half-blind Baby Mija: who knew short chickens could be so mischievous?

The rest of my girls are doing well. My three young hens are growing faster every day, and they spend their afternoons strutting around the yard like tall, sleek supermodels in a clique-ish huddle. Squatty little bantam cochin Aunt Bea still terrorizes my now-huge Baby Mija for some inexplicable reason. As little Bea breezes across the yard I can just see the look of horror on Mija’s poor, half-blind face; Bea seems to sense this, and she deliberately moves toward Mija just to get the chase going. The sight of a squatty, feather-footed bantam Cochin running across the yard after a full-grown chicken is something that must be seen to be appreciated; I really must get the video camera out one day and capture it.

Favorite, simple grilled summer supper

There is plenty of yard work to be done at this time of year so the place doesn’t start looking like a Heironymus Bosch painting; however, the extreme, unseasonable heat has made things slow going. Temperatures here have been in the mid to high 90s already, and nights are not much relief. By mid-afternoon on the weekends we are usually tapped out and ready to sit in the shade (or inside!) with a nice cool glass of Pinot Gris and just talk about yard work. RT will fire up the grill, and just to keep things simple we go to our old fall-back summer supper—steaks and fresh veggies, lightly salted and peppered and thrown right on the grill. Simple and no fuss.

One of the great early summer treasures here in the South are the sweet, delicious peaches. The real-deal peaches around here are only available for a few weeks to a month, and they are savored for the brief time they’re here. After our supper the other day, I whipped up one of my favorite peach desserts to enjoy out in the shade. I learned this recipe from a crazy pastry chef I used to know, and its delicious richness combined with the freshness of in-season fruit is absolutely spectacular.

Rich, sweet Amaretto Sabayon over fresh Georgia peaches: Heaven indeed

I started with fresh Georgia peaches, first washed and dried then carefully sliced into bowls. The Amaretto Sabayon was whipped up in a double boiler I made by using a stainless steel bowl over a pot of simmering water. We used fresh eggs from the hens, of course, and when the lightly foamy concoction was ready we spooned it over the peaches and sprinkled with some of our own freshly-picked blueberries. Perfect! I placed the “recipe” here on my website if you’d like to try for yourself.

Every season has so many beautiful things to savor, whether food, wine, good company, beloved animals, mysterious plants or any of the other million things I can think of that I so enjoy experiencing. What a treat to move through this world exploring it with all my senses! On warm June days like this, it feels like a (hot) playground custom-made for me.

Lovely Echinacea blooms in the patio garden

Does a chewed rose smell as sweet? You bet it does!

“These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”

- Emerson, Self Reliance

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Spring 2009 in Jenotopia has been an unpredictable whirl of torrential downpours, office drama, dozens of chicks, busy family schedules and occasional chaos. Like the flooded earth outside, I have not found enough time for the quiet reflection needed to adequately absorb events and respond in a natural and meaningful manner.

We have nearly finished cleaning up the yard and gardens after weeks of heavy rain, and it is already clear that this gardening season will be very different from last year. Last year’s breathtaking cascade of roses has been replaced with thin, defoliated bushes and piles of brown-tipped, early-rotting blooms: those plants that escaped black spot and the Old-Testament-style host of insects had their blossoms spoiled by still more rain. Our vegetable garden was planted three weeks late, simply because the heavy rain made the ground like chocolate pudding - - too heavy for tilling and planting.

The chicken coops and runs were plagued by dangerous mold from all the rain and humidity, forcing daily cleaning with bleach and lots of shoveling. Even the brooder chicks felt the effects of the weather, being forced to stay indoors instead of playing outside in the health-giving sunshine in the afternoons. I had some initial trouble locating buyers for some of my older chicks, resulting in a bit more crowding than I would have liked. And most unfortunate of all, we had to put down two chicks for unrelated issues, one for severe deformities and one, tragically, for illness related to his digestive system.

My beautiful Skye - - tragically lost to us

Dear, sickly chick begs the question of why there is suffering among little ones

I write all this only to say that now that I have time to reflect on the season’s happenings, I find a general current of dissatisfaction underlying my perception of things. When I look around and see chewed roses and mucky gardens, sick pets and stressed families and piles of paperwork and a messy house, I realize I am comparing these things to an ideal I have in my head - - an ideal of perfection.

So what is perfection, this thing at the source of my unease? –And more importantly, can I have it surgically removed?

A Western philosopher could take the predictable route through Aristotle, through Thomas Aquinas and others who follow and interpret the concept of perfection through religious lenses as it relates to mankind and his environment - - and his God. Mathematicians, chemists and those of the scientific ilk may take refuge in quantifications of perfection that may be calculated or measured. Perfection in art further complicates the philosophical picture, now elevating the question to throbbing Jenotopia headache status.

I will reserve the headache-inducing philosophical arguments for my unfortunate family and nearby friends, then, and suffice with this: I finally realized I have perpetuated my own sense of unease and dissatisfaction by maintaining a personal idea of perfection that is flawless, spotless, glossy, improbable, and not in keeping with the glorious, overgrown chaos of reality in which I live. In my mind’s eye I saw velvety, flawless roses in a beautifully-manicured garden; weather that responded to my every whim; customers who called when I wanted them to and purchased my birds without question; a house that magically maintained itself; and a family that constantly read my mind and did whatever I wished. By maintaining this exercise in fantasy, my eye became trained to miss the unscrubbed uniqueness and beauty that is all around me!

Remember those chewed roses I mentioned? They sufficed quite well for the bees, and in the mornings and evenings their heavenly perfume still fills the air when I am out in the yard.

The soppy, late vegetable garden? We tilled and planted it just fine once the rain ended, and we now have lovely brown rows of earth with all sorts of vegetables peeping out and blooming. The soil texture is now the best it has ever been.

New rows of plants and sleeping seeds: late but still viable

The moldy, wet chicken coops? They are drying out, and the hens come out and flap their wings in hearty satisfaction when they see the morning sun rising behind the maple trees.

The overcrowded chicks? My handsome, noisy young roosters have all been sold off to live with their own harems of lovely ladies, and I have three beautiful young pullets growing into very fine laying hens. Fall in Jenotopia will be chock-full of blue and dark brown eggs!

Nick struts around . . . in the kitchen??

We miss you already, Big Rosie

Farewell, Apollo and Daphne

Pretty young pullets

And my family? They are as loving as ever, and those who need to are stepping in to support those in need. The children are growing into beautiful adults, we adults are learning what is important in life, and we are all growing wiser and more appreciative of each other.

And how about that job? Back at the office my paperwork ebbs and flows but never really goes away, but as I watch friends and acquaintances struggle with layoffs and life changes while I enjoy abundance, I realize just how fortunate I am to remain insulated against many of the changes going on in the world around me. I have goals and dreams for the future path of my life - - but while out in the garden on a sunny Saturday morning snipping plants and enjoying the sounds of the girls clucking away, I am filled with the silent knowledge that in its own funny way my life is complete right now - - in all its unvacuumed, bug-chewed, feather-strewn glory.

What is perfection, then? I won’t presume to argue with the great philosophers or mathematicians or spiritual leaders, but for me perfection is that which is sufficient unto itself. It lacks nothing: it is harmonious, a state of completeness. It is not a static, unchanging ideal: it reflects the beauty and power of the objects and individuals I encounter - - all of whom are complete, yet ever-unfolding into their unique potential.

I am looking forward to another perfect summer.

To every thing there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
a time of war, and a time of peace. . .

- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Old Testament

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The earth here is greening over, and the warm air is brimming with the sounds of songbirds and tiny frogs. Bright tulips are Monet splashes of color bobbing in the sunlight. Pink and white tree-blossoms shiver to the ground with each gust of wind, and wispy dandelion puffs float along looking for homes. In Jenotopia it is time to plant, and we spent last Saturday making preparations for the 2009 vegetable and herb gardens. The weather was beautiful, and like the few cirrus clouds that passed over, the day drifted by in a lovely kaleidoscope of images of my very favorite things:

Tiny chicks and spring flowers . . .

New Cayuga grape cuttings for planting . . .

Clematis buds waiting to break . . .

Lambs ear creeping along in the shade . . .

Yes Ang, that rock is from our weekend at Big Sur . . .

RT tilling the vegetable garden . . .

Hobie, sun-drunk while RT tilled the garden . . .

Beautiful Edna, iridescent black against the newly-green grass . . .

Crazy, bald Baby Mija stretching out to gather up every drop of sunlight . . .

Bantam girls pecking away in their new yard . . .

Fresh chives waiting to be added to dinner . . .

And when the work was finished, a lovely bottle of 2005 Domaine Magellan Grenache/Carignan . . .

I was looking for a Grenache blend this weekend (a GSM, specifically), and my local wine merchant suggested this absolute gem. Made in the south of France, this wine is grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides, and uses no commercial yeast - - only what is naturally-occurring in the cellar. The result was a beautiful expression of the grapes: a vibrant mouthful of amazing red and black fruit tinged with a hint of anise; nice, balanced tannins and good acidity from the Grenache at the back end. I was so pleased to find this wine.

We finished our work (relatively) early on Saturday before relaxing into wine and dinner, and it was the perfect evening to grill out. While RT prefers his New York strip, I enjoyed tender morsels of locally-grown filet from our town butcher. What was not finished in the evening was wrapped and enjoyed Sunday afternoon as thinly-sliced filet sandwiches, cool and delicious as we enjoyed the last bits of warm weather before the impending cold front arrived.

Tender, rare filet sandwiches and cool vinaigrette potato salad

Like so many other things in my life, spring here in Tennessee is always a surprise: from one hour to the next I really never know what I’m going to get, so I really must savor the sweet moments as they appear. When I sit inside later watching the cold rain, I will remember that sweetness with clarity, and if I close my eyes I will almost taste the deep deliciousness of red wine and smell the first wisteria blossoms in the air.

“For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath . . .”

Dame Edna seeks her prize

March pear blossoms

Vieni vieni candida
vien vermiglia
tu del mondo sei maraviglia
tu nemica d’amare noie
da ad anima delle gioie
messaggiera per primeravera
tu sei dell’anno la giovinezza
tu del mondo sei la vaghezza.

Translation:
Come [flowers and blossoms],
come white, come vermilion.
You are a marvel for the world
and the nemesis of all things dreary.
Give joy to the soul
through your message of spring.
You are the youth of the year
and the beauty of the world.

– Giuseppino (Italian, ca. 1600)

While it is still getting down near freezing on some nights, we are enjoying some glorious spring days here in Middle Tennessee. The warm sunny afternoons signaled the sleeping plants, who are yawning and stretching toward the sunlight. The grass has its first flush of green, daffodils cover the hillsides near old farm houses in the Shire, and when I stumble outside in the pre-dawn darkness to feed the hens, the sky is filled with the sound of birds. –Not just songbirds, mind you: my little banty hens sing to me as well, although their “song” sounds more like a group of angry jays scolding me.

The little ladies are doing well, and I believe all four of the gold-necked d’Uccles are laying now. There is a bit of hen drama going on in the coops, however, as the onset of spring has signaled two of my bantam cochins to go broody.

When a hen decides to “go broody,” she will sit for weeks on a nest in a trancelike state. She will have pulled the soft down feathers from her breast area to line her nest and expose the eggs to the warmth of her skin. She may leave the nest very briefly for food, water and a good stretch, but a good broody hen will return to her responsibility quickly. To the nest she’ll return and sit, flattened and growling like an angry pancake, pecking anyone who dares disturb her precious eggs.

Both Lucy Liu and Aunt Bea have gone broody (yes, Aunt Bea is still here, but that’s another story). Luckily for them I happened to have some fertile bantam cochin eggs from a contact in North Carolina, and both hens hatched out some adorable little chicks. Unluckily for me, I removed the chicks to stay with their brothers and sisters in a brooder, and both hens are now still broody.

Angry pancake: Lucy Liu awaits egg hatching

I seem to be on a trajectory winding ever closer to Ultimate Cuteness: first the bantam hens, then two batches of standard-size chicks, and now a batch of what may be the cutest chicks ever: bantam cochin frizzles. These chicks are bantam sized cochins, with full, round tail feathering and feathered feet. As an added bonus, though, over half have the genetic trait of “frizzling,” meaning their feathers curl. When they are grown they will look like adorable one-pound little feather balls. Be still, my heart!

At one week of age I can already tell which ones express the frizzle gene. Below on the left is a “splash” chick, who will be white with splashes of grey. Her feathers will be straight. On the right is a blue (or possibly lemon blue) chick who will be frizzled. Even his tiny foot feathers are curled!

Bantam frizzle cochins, one straight-feathered and one with frizzle gene

In between caring for chicks and hens, I am also beginning my garden preparations for the year. I spent yesterday planting herbs and roses around the banty playhouse, and I hope to begin planting vegetable seedlings indoors today - - although those who know me and my superstitions also know I will not be ready to announce my 2009 plantings until we are fully past the “jinx” stage. We will keep the same size plot we used last year, though, with some changes to the lineup to get more of the veggies we want.

As I type this I am looking out the window realizing we are blessed with another gorgeous spring day - - and I am indoors! I am going outside to enjoy the lovely weather, and I wish you all a Sunday full of sunshine and new leaves poking through the warm soil.

Thaney bored with photo session

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For a cute video of broody hens, visit Rooster Red’s YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7-HY5OV5CA .

To read about the New World Renaissance Band’s album featuring the quote opening this post, visit http://cdbaby.com/cd/tnwrband1 .

To learn more about Nightwatch Recording, a wonderful record label that supports medieval and Renaissance artists, visit http://www.nightwatchrecording.com/ .

RT holding tiny Black Copper Marans chick

By this time of year it seems that spring will never come to Middle Tennessee. The landscape is an endless wash of grey, and every tease of warmth is quickly followed by chill winds and bleak winter rain. We even had snow again last weekend, brought along on an icy northern cloud that whipped through the state in a matter of hours and left one to ten inches of white in its wake. Now, the southern winter weather is by no means a competitor for the Buffalo-Rochester winters of my early childhood, but the cold grey days add up for all of us and make us wonder when spring will begin creeping over the landscape to bring us some green relief.

All is not lifeless and asleep, though: all across the countryside tiny new lives are arriving, harbingers of the coming season. In mid-February I made my third visit to Bonnie Blue Farm to witness kidding season in all its glory. The weather made its usual ups and downs during my stay, but nothing stopped the lovely ladies from their business of bringing tiny newborn kids to the farm.

Kidding season is a busy time for a working goat dairy. Along with the daily tasks of milking, feeding and caring for fifty goats; creating delicious, fresh cheeses and getting them to market comes the added responsibility of tending to new mothers and their young. But before the kidding comes the waiting . . .

Sugar waits for her goat kids to be born

Goat does do not always cooperate with their scheduled due dates. They also do not coordinate kidding times with other farm tasks. This means plenty of watching and waiting, and just when you think things are going to quiet down - -

“Mind if I nibble on your ear?” –Healthy young Nubian twins

Surprise!

I was fortunate to witness the births of two sets of beautiful Nubian goat twins, each with one buckling and one doeling. Luckily, both births went quickly and uneventfully. As any farmer can tell you, though, things do not always go smoothly, and farming with animals has its share of tragedies. Like Life itself, though, Bonnie Blue Farm moves through the beauty and tragedy of kidding season in its own mysterious rhythm, and even suffering and death have their time and season.

Young Saanen doelings in motion

The Jenotopia household has been full of excitement as well: we have tiny chicks hatching in new incubators, and we now have two brooder cages of babies basking and playing under heat lamps. The little fellow in the top picture of this post came into the world on February 26 with a tiny peck from inside his dark brown egg:

Marans chick pipping, February 26

As chickens approach Day 21 of their incubation, they will move into hatching position facing the large end of the egg. During this time they pierce the air cell at the end of the egg, and you can begin to hear them peeping from inside the egg! Next comes the “pip”—the chick makes a sharp peck in the shell itself and samples outside air for the first time. Usually the chick rests for several hours while it converts to pulmonary respiration and finishes absorbing the last of the yolk sac.

When it is ready, the chick will then start “zipping” the shell by making a line of pecks at beak level, turning inside the shell and continuing the line until it can pop the bottom of the shell open in a heroic effort that exhausts all its energy.

Tiny newborn Marans chick lies exhausted after hatching

The tired, wet chick will rest again and then begin to crawl around and learn to use its tiny muscles. A few more short hours will find a fluffed chick wobbling around looking for its siblings!

Our new chicks have already grown quickly, with the first batch of Ameraucana chicks over three times the size of its week-younger French Marans neighbors.

Lovely group of buff Ameraucana chicks at two days, February 21

The chicks will begin growing feathers on their tiny wings first:

Tiny wing feathers already beginning to grow at four days of age

And in another week we may be able to start telling the difference between the pullets and cockerels (girls and boys). The Ameraucana females will lay blue-tinted eggs when they are all grown up, about five months of age or so. Whether they are male or female, though, they are sure to be beautiful!

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I have seen forty spring seasons come and go, and no matter how well I think I understand the ebb and flow of Life I continue to be astonished by it. The act of witnessing the miracle of newborns entering this world still renders me a little child – tongue-tied, helpless, awestruck at the precious fragility and amazing resilience of tiny lives taking their places in the Great Circle. I am humbled by the Miracle whose spark I still cannot explain, though I have read hundreds of thousands of pages of science and math and philosophy and religion.

I enjoy my great privilege of welcoming these little ones into the remains of another Tennessee winter, and I know that very soon now the daffodils will unfold in the front yard, and the first tinge of green will creep across the landscape. The rest of the migratory birds will return to build nests, and the night air will be filled with the sound of frogs at the creek. The chicks and kid goats will scamper and play and grow, warm summer will be here before I know it, and that sweet rhythm of Life will roll on in its beauty and mystery while I hang on, childlike, and enjoy the ride.

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What? . . .

If you would like to know more about where I purchased my Ameraucana eggs, please visit talented breeder and regional Ameraucana Breeder Club Director Jean Ribbeck at http://home.sprynet.com/~rribbeck/ .

If you would like to read more about chickens, have questions about poultry health, want to find other poultry enthusiasts, or wish to find rare or unusual birds for sale, I highly recommend the wonderful Backyard Chickens Forum, http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/index.php .

If you are in Tennessee and would like to find out where to find award-winning Bonnie Blue Farm cheeses – or perhaps even visit the farm and stay in Gayle and Jim’s lovely guest cabin, visit http://www.bonniebluefarm.com/ .