heat wave at Red Gate Farm

It is a hot morn­ing at Red Gate Farm, when all the road is siz­zling, steam­ing, the air thick with humid­i­ty.  Anne’s pond across the road beck­ons tempt­ing­ly.  “Help your­selves, dive in, because there’s going to be a real heat wave!” Anne invit­ed, as they drove away for their week in the city.   The day we get Avery to dip her city-girl toes into a body of nat­ur­al water… well, let’s just say that day is a long way off.

The flow­ers that my friend Judy brought by on Sat­ur­day so far have held up in the shade of the ter­race.  “I know you and flow­er­ing plants, Kris­ten.  Just water these and keep them out of the direct sun, and you should be all right.  Enjoy,” Judy laughs.

Even when you’re made of cast iron, it’s a hot day to be a dog, or a chicken.

Life has set­tled down to its sum­mer rou­tine.  Kate has ambled across the road, hand firm­ly in Anne’s, pur­ple crocs proud­ly dis­played, in order to plop down on the kitchen floor to play with the old doll­house, and its thou­sands of myr­i­ad items.  What­ev­er this doll­house cost, some dozen years ago, it has paid us back ten thou­sand-fold, enter­tain­ing lit­tle Avery, her cousins Jane and Mol­ly, and now Kate, for hours on end.

The first gro­cery trip has been made — my favorite, when I get to start from scratch and fill up all the draw­ers from emp­ty!  The farmer’s mar­ket has been vis­it­ed, and my favorite peach guy greet­ed.  Tyson adopt­ed Jamie the kit­ten last sum­mer, so I feel it incum­bent upon me to chat while.  Plus, he is super young and cute.

Avery reports that his apple cider dough­nuts are not to be despised.

Now before I for­get, I have had sev­er­al requests for the recipe for the chick­en sal­ad I served to my moth­er and her best friend.  It real­ly was love­ly, so here goes.  Of course once you’ve made the chick­en, you could just have that all by itself, but it was fes­tive with lots of oth­er ingre­di­ents added.  The chick­en itself appears in the recipe index as “Lil­lian Hell­man Chick­en” as it’s made with Hell­man’s mayo.

Hoosier Sum­mer Chick­en Salad
(serves at least 4)

2 large chick­en breast fillets

1/2 cup Hell­man’s mayo

1/2 cup grat­ed pecori­no or parmesan

juice of 1/2 lemon

sprin­kle Fox Point Seasoning

1/2 cup bread­crumbs (I used a mix­ture of home­made and Panko)

3 hard-boiled eggs — dev­illed or plain, cut in half

hand­ful heir­loom tiny toma­toes, halved

6 lit­tle heir­loom pur­ple pota­toes, steamed and halved

1 head Bibb/Boston/butter/little gem let­tuce (name depends on where you are!), inner leaves only

minced chives and dill to garnish

sea salt and black pep­per to taste

dress­ing option­al (you could just driz­zled olive oil over it): equal parts may­on­naise, olive oil, lemon juice, a dol­lop of mus­tard, a dash of white wine vinegar)

Trim the chick­en breasts com­plete­ly.  Mix the mayo, cheese, lemon juice and sea­son­ing and squish the chick­en breasts in the mix­ture, gen­er­ous­ly coat­ing them on all sides.  Roll in bread­crumbs and bake at 425F/220C for 30 min­utes.  Let rest a few min­utes, then slice on the bias.

Sim­ply arrange the chick­en and all the oth­er ingre­di­ents on a pret­ty plat­ter, and pour over what­ev­er dress­ing you have cho­sen. Enjoy!

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Most­ly I con­fess that our fam­i­ly has been eat­ing… CORN.  And CORN.  And more corn!  It’s what I dream of all year long in Lon­don, where what­ev­er pass­es for sweet­corn just isn’t.  Of course, I could be miss­ing mar­vel­lous corn because I am not there in July and August, but right now I’m just hap­py to have the Con­necti­cut real thing.

Of course, life in the sum­mer would­n’t be com­plete with a vis­it from dar­ling Jes­samy, beloved feline child of our friends Alice and Con­nie, who kind­ly lend her to us for “Kit­ten Camp” twice a year.  Avery and Kate can­not get enough of her.

Our qui­et exis­tence was enlivened con­sid­er­ably last week by Avery’s first dri­ving les­son!  John was incred­i­bly patient, amaz­ing­ly effec­tive in his tuition.  I sat ner­vous­ly in the back seat, twist­ing my hands togeth­er at the ridicu­lous prospect of my BABY being behind the wheel of a car.  But there was no need for nerves.  She did beautifully.

It was quite the ecu­meni­cal adven­ture, look­ing for a place to prac­tice.  We start­ed off at the local rid­ing sta­ble, but since the only place to dri­ve was an aban­doned round­about, we moved on.  After all, Avery’s dri­ving skills would even­tu­al­ly have to include more than first gear, con­stant­ly turn­ing left.  So it was off to the Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church, which was fine for sev­er­al spins, get­ting up to sec­ond gear, but then a nice lady drove up, rolled down her win­dow and announced that it was pri­vate prop­er­ty. Sigh.

Off to the syn­a­gogue up the road and their love­ly park­ing lot, grown over with weeds.  “I bet you’re the only one in your class to learn to dri­ve on a bed of clover,” I observed.  Short­ly after­ward we were shooed away by anoth­er nice lady.  Does­n’t God want Avery to learn to dri­ve safely?

Final­ly we end­ed up in the park­ing lot of an Epis­co­palian church which hap­pens to be sit­u­at­ed at the junc­tion of sev­er­al stop­lights, which means the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion uses it to cut through and avoid the lights.  There­fore, although it is tech­ni­cal­ly pri­vate prop­er­ty (a nice lady drove up to tell us), “as long as you’re real­ly care­ful, you can stay and prac­tice.  Good luck!”

Avery did beau­ti­ful­ly.  The usu­al spate of begin­ner’s “killing the engine”, which will soon pass.  And home safe­ly, to a restora­tive sup­per of bison burg­ers, and… corn.

And a new vari­a­tion on the clas­sic stuffed “cour­gettes,” or “zuc­chi­ni” as we call them State­side: crab-stuffed!  So now you can have sausage-stuffed for your Con­gre­ga­tion­al friends, mush­room-stuffed for your Jew­ish friends, and crab for the Epis­co­palians.  Works for every­one.  And if you have a lit­tle extra stuff­ing, mush­rooms are a good con­tain­er, too, as you see.

We’ve had plen­ty of moments when the pow­er goes out, as usu­al.  Per­haps this sum­mer is the sum­mer we’ll upgrade the elec­tri­cal sys­tem.  What a lux­u­ry it would be to have the air con­di­tion­ing on WHILE run­ning the dish­wash­er or the dry­er?  I can’t imagine!

The week­end brought my sis­ter Jil­l’s fam­i­ly for “every­thing on a let­tuce leaf” lunch, and all of us plus Anne, David and Kate for ice cream up the road.  Kate waved her cone back and forth across the fence, lead­ing David to sup­pose that she’s invent­ed a new top­ping, “Fences Pieces.”

Mol­ly woke up from her nap, and we all gath­ered for an after­noon of water bal­loons.  Here’s my lit­tle Molly…

And fear­less Jane.

One hun­dred water bal­loons filled at the kitchen sink, thrown at peo­ple, or the tram­po­line, or sim­ply dropped on the kitchen floor.  John and Joel chas­ing each oth­er across the sun­lit lawn, Jill bar­ri­cad­ing her­self clev­er­ly behind a stack of books, a cam­era, her phone in her hand!  “You can’t throw any at me, I have a phone!”  Jane used lit­tle Kate as a human shield!  Final­ly we got all the girls to take a deep breath and pose.

The fes­tiv­i­ties end­ed when simul­ta­ne­ous­ly John and Joel cracked Jane’s and Mol­ly’s heads togeth­er and Kate’s bal­loon erupt­ed into a foun­tain of water up her nose.  “It isn’t a par­ty until every­one’s cry­ing,” Jill and John con­clud­ed, and then it turned out we had run out of bal­loons!  A beau­ti­ful after­noon.  Anne and I agreed, “We keep say­ing this is the most beau­ti­ful day of the sum­mer, but this REAL­LY is.”

Sun­day found me BELL-RING­ING!  Yes, I could have tak­en the sum­mer off, but I real­ly did not want to lose every­thing I have learned over the past few months (mea­sured in hours, as one does in bell-ring­ing, and I am up to hour 13).  So it was but the work of a moment to enter my zip­code into the web­site of the North Amer­i­can Guild of Change Ringers, and voila, there was a tow­er for me.  The Mel­rose School in Brew­ster, New York, with a pur­pose-built wood­en and glass tower.

This tow­er con­tains eight love­ly bells, vin­tage 1973, and is home to some of the friend­liest peo­ple I have ever met.  Name­ly Mike, my intre­pid teacher, tak­ing time off from his rehearsals for “Sweeney Todd” at the local com­mu­ni­ty musi­cal theatre.

After intro­duc­ing me to the bells — each with a beau­ti­ful verse inscribed upon it, and named var­i­ous­ly (I rang William and Angela, for exam­ple), we descend­ed into the ring­ing cham­ber, with its eight ropes arranged in an unusu­al oval shape, suit­ed to the shape of the tow­er itself which had to accom­mo­date to the plot of land assigned to it, in the grounds of the school.

This bell tow­er and its bells were pro­vid­ed for by a bequest from the great Amer­i­can busi­ness­man and phil­an­thropist C.V. Starr, founder of AIG and great-uncle of Ken­neth Starr, for­mer US Inde­pen­dent Coun­sel.  The Mel­rose School itself is home to a con­vent, the Com­mu­ni­ty of the Holy Spir­it, who found­ed the school and named it for the Scot­tish saint Melrose.

For some rea­son — I will try to find out next week — Starr left mon­ey to the con­vent and the school specif­i­cal­ly to pro­vide for the bells, and I’m so hap­py he did!  Because he was who he was, and the Sis­ters who they were, no less a per­son­age than the Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury him­self came to ded­i­cate the bells, in 1974.  And so my tow­er was born.

How the ringers wel­comed me!  John, a white-haired gen­tle­man of my very favorite sort — dou­ble PhD in music and the­ol­o­gy! — Dinah, an ex-nun, Men­sa mem­ber and now pro­fes­sion­al fin­ger­nail-painter, Mike with his gris­ly musi­cal t‑shirt and his three beau­ti­ful small chil­dren milling around the school.. they wel­comed me all.  And I rang prop­er changes for the first time!  I shall try to explain.

First, one sim­ply learns to han­dle the bell, silent­ly.  This process takes about ten hours.  Then, as you’ve heard me bur­ble on about, one is allowed to make a sound.  Then, one take part in “rounds,” which is sim­ply the bells — six or eight or ten — ring­ing down­ward from the high­est tone to the low­est, in order.  THEN, just as I’ve rung rounds only TWICE and to only par­tial suc­cess, these Mel­rose ringers prod­ded me into “call changes,” which means that as I’m ring­ing my num­ber six bell in its num­ber six place, the con­duc­tor shouts, “six to five,” and I ring in FIFTH place instead!  Try to imag­ine!  “Six to four,” might come next, and I have to look to the num­ber THREE bell to ring after her, in fourth place.

MAD­DEN­ING, I can tell you!  Mad­den­ing.  It is the one activ­i­ty of my entire life where it is impos­si­ble to think of any­thing else while I’m doing it.  There is no recipe-mus­ing, blog-plan­ning, gro­cery list-mak­ing.  I can ONLY RING THE BELL.  No won­der where are prayers for us!

It was a thrilling, love­ly expe­ri­ence.  I can’t say that I per­formed bril­liant­ly, as it took me much too long to respond to the call changes.  After all, only a few hours ago I was sim­ply “rope-pulling” silent­ly!  But final­ly, toward the end, as I was sweat­ing freely and fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to keep up, the con­duc­tor called one last change and I got it straight­away.  “Go to the head of the class!” shout­ed my fel­low ringer John triumphantly!

“Mod­esty is a beguil­ing trait,” he said after­ward, as we made safe loops of our ropes, “but you need not be mod­est any longer.  You have made great progress.”

THRILLING!

Now it’s back to the mun­dane Red Gate Farm tasks of weed­ing, win­dow-wash­ing and pick­ing up hun­dreds of tiny scraps of water bal­loon from the dan­de­lion-dot­ted grass…