That Fiona …

I wish everyone could get to know just one nice chicken really well. Then we’d stop thinking that chickens are dumb and unfeeling, and we’d give chickens much better lives. All chickens are different. Even when they’re brought up similarly, they have very distinct personalities. The more attention they get, and the more you interact and talk with them, the more they develop, and the sweeter their attitude toward human beings.

In the new generation of hens at Acorn Abbey, Fiona loves human attention the most. Now, one of the first things I explain to all the abbey chickens, as soon as they’re old enough to understand, is the deal we have: They get a nice home, free food and water, a place to roam and scratch, a decent house, a fence to protect them from predators, and a place to retire when they’re old. I get the eggs. None have complained about the deal, other than Patience who got it in her head a couple of summers ago that she was going to keep her eggs and sit on them. I disputed that, and I won. But I don’t think she understood that at that time she had never met a rooster and that she was wasting her time.

Anyway, Fiona quickly figured out where I live and what door I usually emerge from. The first time she stood at the front door and called (at the top of her lungs), I thought she was merely asking for attention. But a few days later, after some repetition of this behavior, I found three eggs under the bench beside the front door. Then I had to reconsider her behavior. I think she was letting me know that she’d left me an egg.

Now, why would Fiona choose not to lay in the chicken house like the other hens? No matter how much new wire I put up to block their escape routes, she and Helen still get over the fence any time they like. Given that Fiona could lay anywhere she chooses inside or outside the fence, why would she come here to lay, and why would she stand at the door, look through the glass, and call at the top of her lungs after laying? I think she’s bringing me a gift, and she wants me to know.

She loves to be picked up, petted, scolded mildly, and put back inside the fence. In our evening chats, when I sit a spell in the orchard with the chickens before they go in for the night, Fiona climbs into my lap. The other hens get jealous.

Spoiled? Nah. It’s the way all chickens ought to live.


Fiona


Nice place! Can I stay?


A gift left under the front porch bench.

Pie season!


Let’s hope it’s not as dry as it looks in this photo. There’s juice down in there.

This is prime pie season — one of the best times of the year for cooking.

My apples this week came from a roadside produce stand on U.S. 601 in Davie County. They said the apples came from Cana, Virginia, which is almost certainly true, because that’s an apple and trucking center. I also bought the pumpkin at the same roadside stand. It probably came from North Carolina, South Carolina, or Georgia on one of the produce trucks that run back and forth from this area to Florida, feeding many of the roadside produce stands.

Don’t even think of using a store-bought pie crust! Pie crusts are easy to make. I have used olive oil for years. You might think that olive oil would have too strong a flavor for pie crust, but I have never tasted olives along with the apples. I find that about 2 and 1/3 cups of unbleached flour makes a generous crust. For that much flour, half a cup of olive oil is not quite enough, and 2/3 cup is too much. I’ve found that it’s definitely possible to use too much oil and not enough water or milk in the crust. The crust will come out powdery rather than flakey. So I usually add half a cup of oil to the flour, then mix and add more until it looks right. One to two tablespoons of water or milk (or soy milk) is about right.

This is prime pumpkin-shopping time. I scorn the bright orange pumpkins with the ugly shapes. I only buy what I call “pink pumpkins,” the segmented pumpkins. Pumpkins are magical, so only a Cinderella fairy-tale pumpkin is proper. Making a pie with canned pumpkin in a store-bought crust is a crime for which you’ll lose your cooking license. It’s all about doing everything from scratch…


Ready for the oven


Guess who’s next…

Calling it quits for 2012


Heirloom green beans for seed

Though I feel a bit guilty, I did not plant turnips and greens for a late garden this year. I was just too burned out from a summer of gardening and canning.

Today I officially retired the garden. I picked the remaining green peppers. There was about a peck of them. I also picked the last of the green beans, which I had intentionally left on the vine to go to seed. They will be next year’s bean seeds. They are the family heirloom green beans that have been in my family for four or five generations. I’ve put them in the attic to dry before I shell them.

The black walnuts were given to me by a friend. I don’t have a walnut tree — though I’m still looking for one. These days plenty of people have mature walnut trees, but 99.9 percent of the crop lies on the ground and goes to waste because people just aren’t hungry enough anymore to do all the work of hulling them and cracking them. I’m not sure how far I’ll get with that job either, but I at least want to have a go at it.

Now if I only had access to an old, abandoned apple tree. My trees produced a small amount of fruit this year, but I’m still several years away from really having an apple crop.


A peck of peppers


Black walnuts, still in the hulls

English muffins


Onion sandwich on English muffin

During the heat of summer, I slacked off on baking. On a shopping trip to Whole Foods, I broke down and bought some English muffins. They were addictive, so I resolved to start making them when cooler weather returned.

The English muffins from Whole Foods were only marginally decent. They were made largely with white flour. At least the texture was right. I was foolish enough, while feeding my addiction, to try Thomas English muffins from a regular grocery store. They were totally not edible. I should have composted them, but I gave them to the chickens. For one, they contained all kinds of adulterants, including fats and emulsifiers (in the form of mono- and diglycerides) to give the bread that horrible brioche-y, cake-like texture that the hordes of non-coastal America seem to like so much. You know, Wonder bread. Or, in these parts, Bunny bread.

As a matter of fact, when we quote Marie Antoinette as saying, “Let them eat cake,” what she really said, in French, was, “S’ils n’ont pas de pain, qu’ils mange de la brioche!” As pure language, that translates to, “If they don’t have bread, let them eat brioche!” Brioche, of course, is bread — a soft cake-like bread. Culturally, this is probably not translatable, but I strongly suspect that the reference to brioche contained an insult to the type of bread peasants preferred, if they could get it.

Anyway, English muffins take a long time to make, and they’re a pain in the neck. But they have many virtues. For one, because they’re destined for the toaster, they can be put in a bag, popped in the fridge, and kept for days. Fresh from the toaster, you’d never know they were made five days ago. For two, if you make them yourself, the best ones are 100 percent fat free, unlike their competitor for breakfast bread — biscuits.

If you want to make English muffins, I’d recommend starting with this recipe from King Arthur Flour and modifying it to your taste. But notice that even King Arthur brioche-ifies the dough with egg, butter, and sugar. Horrible! I make my dough with nothing but whole wheat flour, water, yeast, and a bit of sugar to feed the yeast. For a proper bread texture, you can’t go wrong with those simple ingredients in your dough.

I think I’ll also make some bagels this fall. It’s been many years since I’ve made bagels, but they’re not much more trouble than English muffins.

Regulatory capture


Americans pay four times more than the French for Internet and cell phone service

The last time I posted on how Americans are being ripped off on the cost of Internet and cellular service, the U.S. ranked around 11th, as I recall, on Internet speed. Now we’re 29th and still falling. As the article says, this is because of regulatory capture. It’s just one of the ways we all pay for the fact that our Congress has been bought.

If Americans only knew anything about the rest of the world. But they don’t.

Revolution


In “Revolution,” the suburbs take on the look of medieval villages, with crops everywhere and chickens running loose.

I’m a great fan of dystopic and post-apocalyptic literature and movies. When good writers let loose their imaginations on where trends might be leading, or what a post-industrial world might look like, they always come up with something interesting.

Now, usually I’m years behind on stuff like this. But thanks to Hulu, Apple TV, and an improving Internet connection, I was able to watch the first episode of NBC’s new series “Revolution.” The first episode was broadcast last week, and I think the second episode, which I have not yet seen, was broadcast last night.

I’m not yet prepared to give it a good review. I haven’t seen enough of it. But so far it’s worth watching.

Technology arrives slowly in the sticks


The iPhone line outside the Verizon store at Madison-Mayodan, 7:45 a.m.

I bought an iPhone 5 today. But there’s a story there.

For the past four years, I’ve used a cell phone that weighs 10 pounds. This is because, when I first came here to live in the woods, nothing else would work. A powerful phone with a real antenna was required to get a signal. At the time, Alltel was the best option in local cellular service. Two years ago, Verizon bought Alltel. Things have been slowly improving after a new Verizon tower came on line about three miles away. Then finally a fiber optic cable was brought in to that tower, and things got even better. Those of you who live in populated places have no idea what rural people go through to get decent cell phone service, not to mention broadband Internet.

I had no choice but to retire the 10-pound Motorola digital bag phone. Verizon sent me a letter saying that all the old Alltel devices would no longer be supported after the first of the year. The timing coincided nicely with the release of the iPhone 5. I was the second person in line this morning at the Verizon store at Madison-Mayodan. I had guessed that there would not be an insanely long line at a rural Verizon store, and I was right. The nice guys inside even opened half an hour early at 8 a.m., which was the official release time for the iPhone 5 on the East Coast.

Here at the abbey, my Verizon signal strength fluctuates from one to three bars. However, I’ll mainly use the iPhone when I’m out and about, so the middling signal I get at home is not a big deal.

The iPhone 5 is cute as a bug. Did you know that the release of the iPhone 5 will actually cause a noticeable boost in our slow economy? By some calculations, the billions of dollars generated by the iPhone will add a .33 point boost to this year’s GDP growth.


My awesome bag phone, now to be retired to the attic

Season total: 44 quarts

I canned a bunch of sauerkraut today. It’s a shame to have to can sauerkraut, because it’s a living fermented food. But there was no way I could eat it all before it went bad. It is outstandingly good sauerkraut — all organic from the abbey’s spring cabbage, made with with sea salt.

I’m done canning for this year. My total production was 44 quarts of food — tomatoes, green beans, pickles, sauerkraut, and homemade chili made from tomatoes and onions from the garden. Forty-four quarts is not exactly slouchy, but it’s also nowhere close to a what it would take for real self-sufficiency. Still, it’s a lot of payback from the garden. There’s food put away, plus more than four months of the year when I bought no produce (other than garlic) from the grocery store.

I learned a lot about sauerkraut this year. In the past, I made it with cabbage I’d bought up in the mountains. This year it was my own cabbage. It was in the crock the afternoon after I picked it. Not only was the kraut much tastier, the fermentation process was much cleaner. There was no sign of mold or scum. Freshness makes a huge difference.

Foyle's War

Foyle’s War, no doubt, is old news to many of you. But I don’t have cable or satellite. It’s Netflix that provides the entertainment at Acorn Abbey, and so I always run a few years behind.

This BBC series has been through seven seasons, starting in Britain in 2002. It was brought to the United States by Masterpiece Mystery. An eighth season is in the works for next year.

When I first started watching Foyle’s War, I saw it as filler entertainment — something to watch when there were no more blockbusters on my Netflix list. But I quickly became addicted to it.

The series follows the British all the way through World War II, starting in May 1940. We see the war through the lives of a detective, Christopher Foyle, and the people in his life. There is a core cast that appears in each episode. But the supporting cast is different in each episode. The cast and acting are superb. During the course of the series they must have employed all the best character actors that Britain has to offer, plus some major stars who appear in only one episode. The casting is so rich that you get big-name actors like James McAvoy in minor roles. I expect Maggie Smith to show up any episode now.

The series is set in the Channel town of Hastings — as in the Battle of Hastings during the Norman Conquest. When England is threatened, Hastings is ground zero, so it’s a great choice as a setting.

The scenery is incredible. The houses and sets are beautiful. The antique vehicles are impressive, with regular appearances by antique aircraft including Spitfires.

The series also is a wonderful education on World War II. I’ve read a couple of books lately on World War II, so this series has fit in nicely. We begin to actually feel the fatique and bravery of the British as the war wears on and on, with World War I still fresh in their minds.

It’s television at its best. Not to be missed.