a week in the country

Just a week ago, we woke up on our first morn­ing at Red Gate Farm, ear­ly as usu­al since we felt it was five hours lat­er, and went for our tra­di­tion­al first-morn­ing, wet-feet, dewy inspec­tion of our domain.  The new­ly-repaired fence was very pleas­ing to the eye, and the house itself nes­tled in its place in the road with calm morn­ing peace.

And then John’s voice broke through the stillness.

“Kris­ten, come here!”

“Where are you?  I’m just going to see how deep the pond is.”

“No, come here now, to the chick­en house!”

Because there were THESE.

Whoa!  Was this what was meant by the many mys­te­ri­ous mes­sages from our local friends as our arrival approached?  Mes­sages like, “Hope you don’t mind get­ting up ear­ly!” and “You have new neighbors!”

Eight lit­tle girls and a roost­er!  As the hours of our first day went by, the sto­ry trick­led down from var­i­ous friends.  Anne and Kate were on their way home from her day camp when the sound of a dis­tressed roost­er filled the air, from the top of the hill.

He was wan­der­ing around Phillips Farm, sur­round­ed by his coterie of ador­ing but equal­ly dis­tressed ladies.  In what I now think of as the Great San­ford Road Chick­en Caper (and I’m dev­as­tat­ed I missed it), phone calls alert­ed about a dozen neigh­bors who turned up with box­es, nets and final­ly a dog crate, try­ing to herd the chick­ens down the hill to the near­est safe place — our dis­used but entire­ly beau­ti­ful chick­en house.

After some dra­ma in the near­by woods, and under our aza­lea bush, under our rose bush, and through the day lilies in the front yard, the ladies and gen­tle­men were round­ed up suc­cess­ful­ly and installed in their new home.  Where we awoke to them last Tues­day morn­ing, and began gath­er­ing eggs straight­away.  It is like a miracle.

Every day has brought more fun with them, more vis­i­tors to check on their hap­pi­ness (total) and our enjoy­ment of them (even more total).

“Peo­ple said I should ask you if you want­ed them, before just dump­ing them on you,” Anne said, “but I knew you had always want­ed chick­ens.”  All our vis­i­tors have uttered vari­a­tions on this theme.  We should have warned you?  But we knew…

I sit for untold peri­ods of time just watch­ing them, their antics, their enjoy­ment of life here at Red Gate Farm.

There is hon­est­ly noth­ing more pure­ly relax­ing than plump­ing down with a book and a cock­tail in the evening and fol­low­ing their intense­ly chick­en­ish antics.  For the first few days I had to do this with­in their chick­en house, which was fine, if a bit stinky.

But then John — on the hottest after­noon of the week — acquired some chick­en wire (now I know why it’s called that!), and built them this lit­tle out­door pas­ture, so they could roam a bit but stay safe.

And last night, with Mark and Tay­lor look­ing on indul­gent­ly, we let them out, OUT prop­er­ly, for the first time, hav­ing got advice from Mike that a week in their house and pas­ture should be enough for them to know where home is.  I’ve nev­er seen any hap­pi­er crea­tures in my life!

Avery has referred to this super­vised free­dom as my “moth­er hen” rou­tine, which pret­ty much sums it up.  Kate-Across-The-Road (aged 8) and I had a very telling con­ver­sa­tion on this topic.

“Kris­ten, I think we should def­i­nite­ly keep them penned up, where they’ll be safe.”

“Well, Kate, I can see your point, but after all, we can’t keep you penned up, where you’ll be safe.  We have to let you roam free.  And think of Avery, on her own in our Lon­don flat.  We can’t keep either of you penned up.”

Small silence.

“Yes, Kris­ten, but I’m not a chick­en, and nei­ther is Avery.  We are humans, and we can make intel­li­gent decisions.”

Kate has her own chicks to look after.

Her mom Anne and dad, Dave, are hap­py to help out with their care.

So the days have passed by in a blur of chick­en hus­bandry, vis­its from all and sundry in our lit­tle sphere of friend­ship at Red Gate Farm.  Of all the things I love about this place — the blue of the sky, the red of the barns, the green of the trees, the white of the fence, the peace and seren­i­ty — what I real­ly love most is the knowl­edge that every day brings vis­i­tors.  It might be Regi­na, on South­bury Land Trust Busi­ness up the road, hap­py to take a break for a bit of chicken-spotting.

She was eas­i­ly per­suad­ed to stay for an impromp­tu lunch.

To be fair, when the lunch on offer is a bowl of ice-cold pink gaz­pa­cho, it’s not hard to do the persuading.

Tay­lor drops by to show the chick­ens to her Amer­i­can Girl doll.

Her dad Mark was laden down with pro­duce from their gar­den.  The beets were head and shoul­ders above their super­mar­ket brethren.

Pos­si­bly even more excit­ing than the beets, though, was a bag full of rab­bit liv­ers, which I was more than hap­py to turn into a smooth, creamy parfait.

Rab­bit Liv­er Parfait

(makes about 2 cups)

8 rab­bit livers

4 tbsps butter

1/2 small onion, fine­ly chopped

1 clove gar­lic, fine­ly chopped

2 tbsps Madeira or Marsala

1 tbsp sour cream

Trim the liv­ers very well, remov­ing all con­nec­tive tis­sue and sinews.

Melt the but­ter in a heavy fry­ing pan and fry the onion and gar­lic till soft.  Add the liv­ers and Madeira and turn the heat down to low.  Cook, turn­ing fre­quent­ly, until just cooked and no longer.  Pulse in a food proces­sor with the sour cream, then pass through a fine sieve.  This par­fait is deli­cious warm, but also cold.

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The rab­bit itself turned up a day or two lat­er, and my good­ness, it was absolute­ly won­der­ful on the grill, with fresh bar­be­cue sauce.  I had to watch a YouTube video to teach myself how to joint it, but it was very simple.

Grilled Rab­bit with Fresh Bar­be­cue Sauce

(serves 4)

1 large rabbit

1 cup/250 ml ketchup

1/4 cup/65 ml apple cider vinegar

juice of 1 lemon

3 tbsps dark brown sugar

1 tbsp onion powder

1 tbsps gar­lic powder

sea salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

Joint the rab­bit per the instruc­tions and plunge into salt­ed water for 15 min­utes.  Mean­while, mix all the oth­er ingre­di­ents well togeth­er, and place half the mix­ture in a Ziplock bag.

Place the rab­bit pieces in the bag and mas­sage well until ful­ly coated.

Heat grill to 375F/180C and arrange the rab­bit legs and loin pieces on the grill.  Cook for 20 min­utes, then turn over and brush with some of the remain­ing sauce.  Add the shoul­der pieces and rib pieces to the grill.  Cook for 10 min­utes, then turn the shoul­ders and ribs over and brush with the remain­ing sauce.  Cook every­thing for a fur­ther ten minutes.

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So fan­tas­ti­cal­ly deli­cious!  I had been pre­pared to love the taste and just tol­er­ate the tex­ture, which I had heard could be tough, or dry, or both.  But no, the meat was incred­i­bly juicy and ten­der, and the sauce just the per­fect piquant fla­vor.  So summery.

Mike and Lau­ren stopped by with their lit­tle fam­i­ly of three chil­dren, to see the chick­ens and chicks, and to hear what we have been up to since Christ­mas.  Abi­gail is adjust­ing beau­ti­ful­ly to being the biggest sister.

Lau­ren wears triple moth­er­hood with per­fect aplomb.

Gabriel hov­ered over Kate’s chicks, hop­ping about the ter­race.  “Put back in box, put chicks in box.  Worried.”

Jil­l’s fam­i­ly have come for a hot, sun­ny sum­mer lunch of tall, messy BLTs and dev­illed eggs from our very own chickens!

What a lux­u­ry to sit with fam­i­ly for an entire afternoon!

I’ve had, final­ly, suc­cess with my tof­fee ambi­tions!  Twice I tried in Lon­don, only to end up with once, some respectably crunchy tof­fee, but swim­ming in a bath of point­less­ly extra melt­ed but­ter, and anoth­er time not so much extra but­ter, but a tex­ture like maple sug­ar can­dy.  I refused to be defeat­ed, how­ev­er, and one after­noon last week Kate donned her Cook­ing Camp apron and we gave it our best shot. Score!

 

I fol­lowed this recipe near­ly exact­ly, so I offer it to you with no reser­va­tions.  The only adjust­ments I made were minor — I had no whole almonds, so I scat­tered sliv­ered almonds on the bot­tom instead, and Kate and I felt the mini choco­late chips were too cute to spread out, so we left them whole.  Delicious!

The only thing miss­ing from our won­der­ful sum­mer hol­i­day at Red Gate Farm is, obvi­ous­ly Avery.  She’s hap­pi­ly in our Lon­don flat, send­ing pic­tures of the cats, ask­ing ques­tions about cook­ing, trav­el­ling to the coun­try to see friends.  Some­where along the line our fam­i­ly sum­mers here evap­o­rat­ed, which is entire­ly nat­ur­al and fit­ting, but makes me nos­tal­gic for the old days when I had Avery all to myself.  Ah well, it means that there is some­thing to look for­ward to, when I return to Lon­don in September.

In the mean­time, though, I have my chick­ens, and my revolv­ing door of vis­i­tors, and lat­er today, the arrival of my beloved moth­er for her birth­day cel­e­bra­tions, a three-day coun­try­side extrav­a­gan­za.  Ah, Con­necti­cut sum­mers.  Heaven.