Little Brown Bird with Incredible Talents

If you have been reading this blog for any period of time, you know that Ed and I get a kick out of bird watching around Farm Dover. We gotten pretty good about being able to identify a couple of dozen birds that frequent our farm. We can usually identify a bird if it holds still and we can focus our binoculars on it for a moment or two. But that doesn't happen very often. Instead, we rely on hearing their song, watching their flight pattern, observing how they hold their tail or peck about for food, or seeing bright flashes of color as they flit from branch to branch.

There is a whole category of birds that we usually just throw up our hands and call them "little brown birds." These are the ones that refuse to hold still for more than a nanosecond. They are tiny and wary. We more often hear them than see them. They love tangles of vegetation and vines; brush piles are their playgrounds.  They move in jerky hops. I think most are wrens and sparrows of one sort or another. All fit the description of a little brown bird. Always before, I just dismissed them as a not very special bird. But not anymore....

from wikipedia.com

The other day, Ed said he wanted to show me something. He walked quietly up to a tangle of an overgrown wild rose bush, surrounded by honeysuckle. He carefully moved back a thorny branch and invited me to take a look deep inside the dark space.

What I saw was a marvel. A bird nest unlike any I had ever seen. Unlike a robin's nest, it was fully doomed with a round opening on one side. Bits of bark strips, dried grasses, dead leaves, pine needles, straw and bits of small downy fluffs formed the underside. The top was fashioned from bright green moss, like a thatched roof you might see in storybook set in a medieval English countryside.

It was the nest of a Carolina wren and it was breathtaking in its construction; adorable in its execution. My estimation of this little brown bird soared.

The mama wren flew out when she heard us approach and took up station in a nearby bush where she set about letting us know in no uncertain terms that she wanted us gone. Now. I took a quick photo and moved away, assuring her I would not harm her or her eggs/chicks.

Unfortunately, the photo just doesn't do the nest justice. You can't really make out the shape, but here is a closeup of the nest. If you look closely, you can make out the front-door hole in the top-center of the photo; the green moss roof you can see on the left side; and the bottom of the nest is made up of coarser twigs.  The entire nest is snugly tucked in among thorny rose canes. I wish you could see it up close and in real life.

Once I got back home, I pulled out a book called America's Other Audubon which features a collection of reproduced engraved illustration that were initially produced in the late 1800s by a young woman named Genevieve Jones. After she had produced five drawings of her intended 130 species of birds that nested in Ohio she died of typhoid fever. Her family was paralyzed by grief and shock. In mourning their child, they vowed to complete the project that she had started and spent the rest of their lives finding nests/eggs, drawing them accurately and then hand coloring the engraved prints. Her father spent his entire life savings to publish the two-volume book.

The book that I have now was compiled and published three years ago by Joy Kiser and includes the entire collection of the Jones family engravings. Here's the illustration for the Carolina wren.

The nest we found was even more amazing than this illustration -- the green roof is proof in my mind that this little brown bird has incredible talents.

I never know what I might see around our farm. Almost anytime I take the time to look, I see something amazing. Albert Einstein once said that if you look deep into nature, you will understand everything better. I think he is right.

Before the sun sets on Earth Day

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world
is not given by his fathers,
but borrowed from his children. 

– John James Audubon

Every day feels a bit like Earth Day to me around Farm Dover. We spend most of our working days trying to be good stewards to our 40 acres – planting trees, tending to our garden, foraging for salad fixings, installing bluebird and owl houses.... 

Today was no exception. We started our day by dropping off our recycling at the new Shelby County Recycling Center. We separate and recycle all our glass, plastic, aluminum, metal, cardboard, and newspaper. We compost all our kitchen scraps, which leaves very little "garbage" which we also drop off at the new center. They charge for "garbage." This month cost us 90 cents. 

Afterward, we stopped by the Kentucky Utilities office on Main Street in Shelbyville. They were giving away red bud seedlings. We left with six; two of which we dropped off at our neighbors. Once we got home, we planted the four seedlings – two down by the creek and the other two in the tree line along the drive. 

After lunch Ed cut a walking path for me along the creek while I finished weed whipping out by the front gate. Ed walked out to help me finish and then showed me two nests that he found while walking out to meet me at the entrance – one I think was a robin's nest, newly build, but still eggless; and the other a wren's nest that was the coolest thing in that it had a roof made of green moss and a tiny round front door. The photo I took just doesn't do it justice, so I'll try again tomorrow. 

We finished the afternoon chores by harvesting a few asparagus and some sage and oregano, placing a cover over our strawberries as it is forecast to frost tonight, and changing the water in the birdbaths. 

It is an honor and privilege for us to tend to this small piece of earth. It is Ed's and my intention to leave it in good shape for our children's generation, as it is from them that we have borrowed it. 

Fickle

Last week I was all about daffodils; this week it's viburnum, specifically the ones just outside our front door. My affection has turned from jonquils to juddi (Viburnum x juddi). 

Twenty-one chest-high bushes line our drive out front. The pinky-white snowball blossoms emit the loveliest fragrance. I can smell them from inside the house when the screen door is open. I don't think the blooms will last long, and when they go, so too might my affections – on to the next flower that blooms at Farm Dover.

A host of golden daffodils

Remember when I wrote about discovering all the kinds of oak trees that Ed and I found growing around our farm? Well, the same thing has happened with this spring's daffodils. I never paid much attention to the variety of narcissus that pop up every spring.

Silly me. I had no idea that there are between 40 and 200 different daffodil species, subspecies or varieties of species and more than 25,000 registered cultivars.

When I saw that more rain was expected for today, I went out yesterday and picked

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Most were ones that the kids helped me plant even before the house was built. Five years ago, I ordered 200 bulbs from White Flower Farm, but didn't think to save the order form, so I don't really know the names of what I have.

Once back in my kitchen, I separated my bouquet by type.

And then I put them into vases and lined them up, according to height. This pleased me greatly.

Then I checked the White Flower Farm website and tried to figure out the names of each flower. I suspect that some of the ones I purchased five years ago are no longer listed. So I'm not 100 percent sure that I've named them properly. But here's my best guesses...

Narcissus Delnashaugh (double daffodil)

Narcissus English Style (double daffodil)

Narcissus Acropolis (double daffodil)

Narcissus Minnow (tazetta daffodil)

Minature White Tete-a-Tete

Narcissus British Gamble (trumpet daffodil)

Narcissus Sir Winston Churchill (double daffodil)

I'm hoping my gardening friends – I'm talking to you: Kathy and Lynn – will set me straight if I've got these wrongly identified.

In the meantime, the perfume from these bouquets is filling the room and I'm loving it.

___________

Another interesting tidbit that I learned in my research:

Narcissus is the Latin or botanical name for all daffodils. So daffodil is the common name for all members of the genus Narcissus. And to confuse you further...

In some parts of the country any daffodil is called a jonquil. The term jonquil actually refers to one specific type of daffodil, the Narcissus jonquilla. Jonquils tend to have clusters of several flowers, instead of just one bloom, and have a strong scent. (See Sir Winston Churchill above.)

And that, my friends, is your botanical lesson for the day. You are dismissed!

Impossible Things before Breakfast

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”
– Lewis Carroll

I dare anyone to do what we did this morning before breakfast and be in a bad mood. It's an impossible thing.

When just barely awake – and not quite functioning properly – Ed invited me out for a morning of birdwatching around Farm Dover. The day was perfect. Not too hot; not too cold. A gentle breeze; warm sun on our faces. Most of the trees have yet to leaf out, making birds easier to spot.

For every bird we saw, we heard dozens of others. Sitting still and quiet, we spotted one or more bluebirds, eastern towhees, brown thrashers, common yellowthroats, red-winged blackbirds, cardinals, wood thrushes, goldfinches, tufted titmouse, quail, doves, blue jays, turkey vultures, mockingbirds, robins, starlings, cowbirds, tree swallows, woodcock, and numerous litle brown sparrows and finches that wouldn't sit still long enough to identity.

I don't have a camera with a large enough lens to capture our sightings for you. But here's a sampling of what we saw.

Eastern towhee from http://fcmn.sharepoint.com/

Bluebird from http://www.dec.ny.gov

Common Yellowthroat from http://commons.wikimedia.org

Wood thrush from http://www.conservewildlifenj.org

The one bird I was able to photograph was a mama woodcock. We stumbled upon her nest last week while walking through our front field. She flushed from her nest and I was able to snap a photo of her spotted eggs.

From behind the front fence, I've been checking on her every day this week and I think she has gotten used to me looking for her. Today, I was able to get a bit closer and take a photo of her, happily tending to her eggs.  Look closely. Do you see her?

After our morning out and about the farm, we headed in for breakfast. We were both in good moods – impossible not to be.

Giving a hoot!

Don't count your owls before they are delivered...

– Albus Dumbledore

For Christmas this year Nate made us an owl house and two bluebird houses. We were thrilled. Unfortunately, the gift did not include installing the owl house at least 10 feet up in a tree. It took Ed and me two ladders, three trips to the hardware store, and a bit of cursing, but we did it. 

Now we are just waiting to hear the mysterious nighttime trill of a breeding pair of Eastern Screech Owls and hope that they choose our comfy new nesting box to call home. 

Like Losing an Old Friend

One of the things that Ed and I love about living out in the country is exploring the back roads of Shelby County. Often on our way to or from somewhere, we'll take a road just to see where it goes and what we might see on it. I'm always on the lookout for old barns. The timeless architecture of these often-decrepit structures never fails to catch my eye and capture my imagination. I like to think about all the history and hard labor that these barns have witnessed over the years.

My favorite old barn is one that we pass every time we head into Shelbyville. It sits at the edge of Aiken Road, just before Highway 53, across from Wild Carrot Farm. It stands empty most of the year, but is filled with golden tobacco hanging from the rafters in the fall. I've written about it before and we stopped to take some photos last September.

I should clarify and say that this barn was my favorite. Here's what we saw when we came up over the hill today: a very sad sight indeed.

The almost constant rain of the past two days and strong wind gusts were evidently just too much for it. Like a very old and tired person, it just collapsed – falling in on itself.  A mass of old posts, beams, wood siding, and tin roofing came crashing down. The only thing that appeared to be inside the barn was a large – and neatly arranged – stack of ancient tobacco sticks.

Next to the barn was a old tree, snapped in two.

My heart ached to see this old barn reduced to a pile of rubble. I feel like I've lost a friend. I'll miss it terribly.

March Madness

While nearly all Kentuckians are obsessed with watching March Madness unfold on the basketball court, my eyes are watching for evidence that Spring is unfolding at Farm Dover. Which is more mad?

Enough

Nearly every meal that I've made for Ed and me in the past two months I've served in simple white bowls. For breakfast, it is steel cut oatmeal, granola with yogurt and berries or cream of wheat. For lunch and dinner it is sometimes a soup; sometimes a stir fry; sometimes a salad. I fill our bowls with goodness and it is always enough – not too much, not too little, always just enough.

We gave up drinking alcohol for Lent, so "setting" the table involves filling our two bowls, figuring out if we need forks, spoons or chop sticks, and filling two glasses of water. It's weird how simple this feels to me – but it feels just right, right now.

I'm not sure how I got in the habit of serving our meals this way. Perhaps it is left-over from our January Asian travels where we scooped bits and pieces of our meal into rice bowls. Or maybe it comes from our experience of placing food in monks' bowls at day break in Chaing Mai, Thailand.

Perhaps it comes from reading too many food blogs that boast the merits of "abundance" bowls. Or maybe it comes from buying six bowls to go with my mom's china and then being excited to use them.

Whatever the reason, it suits me for now. Perhaps later in the spring, I'll want to spread out the bounty of our garden on large white platters, and in summer, I may want to go back to my bright colored Fiestaware. But for now, these simple bowls are enough, just enough.

_______

What to know what I've served? Check out these links:

Corn Chowder
White Chicken Chili
Chili Con Carne
Green Chili with Pork and Hominy
Tom Kha Gai Soup
Cold Lentil Salad With Cucumber and Olives
Mango Salad
Chickpea Salad with Lemon and Parmesan
Gingery Roasted Butternut Squash and Sweet Potatoes
Bubbling Bacon Butter Beans
Spicy Thai Steak Salad
Coconut-lime Sweet Potato and Chickpea Stew
Black-Eyed Pea Cassoulet
Minty Millet & Pomegranate Salad
Butternut Gratin
Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala
Linguine con Vongole
Shakshuka

Can't wait to move on to bowls full of spring peas and asparagus...

In the land where fairies dwell

Fairies are invisible and inaudible like angels.

But their magic sparkles in nature. 

– Lynn Holland

Make it your own

Remember playing "telephone" when you were a kid? Someone would whisper a phrase and it would be passed along from person to person. The last person would repeat what he/she heard and it would be quite different from the original phase -- sometimes outlandishly so.

Well, that is what happened to the cake I baked this weekend. It all started with this cake recipe developed by dessert genius Alice Medrich. It was a dark and spicy pumpkin loaf and it is featured in her new cookbook Flavor Flours.  The cake ingredients included buckwheat flour, pumpkin puree and raisins. 

Cookbook blogger David Lebowitz was inspired by the recipe, but changed it up a bit to include white flour (instead of buckwheat), a yam (instead of pumpkin puree) and apricots (instead of raisins).  He also added a cream cheese frosting. 

One of my favorite bloggers, Shauna James Ahern, took a crack at making it gluten free and chose to add dried cherries in place of the apricots, tossed in a cup of chopped hazelnuts and baked the cake in a bundt pan instead of a loaf one.  She chose not to frost it at all.

I took it from there and substituted a cup of black walnuts (which Ed had nicely harvested last fall, husked, cured in our garage all winter and then cracked and carefully dug out the kernels) for the hazelnuts. I also added a teaspoon of homemade vanilla and drizzled some dark chocolate on the cake's top.

So what started out as loaf cake with pumpkin and raisins, ended up as a gluten-free bundt cake with cherries and walnuts. Oh, and don't forget the chocolate frosting. 

I served my own version of the cake tonight and it was well received.

Ensor sisters, with Agathe (French exchange student – far left) and Jake (friend of Belle's)

came out to Farm Dover for a BBQ dinner, followed by Sweet Potato-Cherry Bundt Cake.

Here's the recipe that I used. 

How would you make it your own?

__________________________

Sweet Potato-Cherry Bundt Cake, adapted from Shauna James Ahern, who adapted it from David Leibovitz, who adapted it from Alice Medrich. My changes are noted in italics. 

115 grams (about 2/3 cup) dried cherries
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 cup water
225 grams (about 1 3/4 cup) Gluten-free Girl all-purpose flour blend.
(I used Bob Red's Gluten-Free All Purpose Flour -- but I am planning to purchase the Gluten-free Girl's blend.)
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
200 grams (1 cup) organic cane sugar
90 grams (1/2 cup) coconut sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
75 grams coconut oil, melted
zest of 1 lemon
1 cup sweet potato puree
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
125 grams (1 cup) toasted hazelnuts, coarsely chopped
(I used black walnuts instead of the hazelnuts)

Prepare the cherries. Chop the cherries as finely as you can. Drizzle the cherries with the honey, then cover with warm water. Let the cherries sit for 30 minutes, then drain the cherries. Save the water. Set aside.

Prepare to bake. Heat the oven to 350°. Grease a bundt pan liberally with coconut oil.

Combine the dry ingredients. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.

Make the batter. Whisk together the cane sugar and coconut sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer. With the mixer running on low, add the egg. When they are light and fluffy together, drizzle in the melted coconut oil and mix until coherent. Mix in the lemon zest.

Finish the batter. With the mixer running on low, pour in 1/2 of the dry ingredients, then the sweet potato puree, then the rest of the dry ingredients. Add the cherries and hazelnuts, then drizzle in the leftover honeyed water until the cake batter is light and pourable.

Bake the cake. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until the top of the cake has started to brown, the edges are pulling ever-so-slightly away from the sides, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 35 to 45 minutes.

Allow the cake to cool to room temperature before removing it from the bundt pan. Serve immediately.

The bowl of oranges is no more

On our recent trip to Southeast Asia, Ed and I were served small glasses of juice every morning. Sometimes it was mango, sometimes coconut, sometimes watermelon, sometimes passion fruit, but always fresh. And always delicious.

With those fresh juices in mind, I decided this morning to juice all the oranges left in the big wooden bowl on our counter, the ones we picked down in Florida last month. The ones that didn't make it into the batch of marmalade.

They didn't look like much. Their skins were thin and getting hard, but it seemed a shame to just toss them in the compost pile out by the garden. So I sliced into one and found it full of juice. I set to work. Using a hand-held olive-wood juicer I cranked my way through the bowl of oranges and watched the measuring pitcher fill up with fresh juice.

Once done, I strained the seeds out and filled a half-gallon mason jar.

I took a sip.  It tastes nothing like store bought juice. It tastes lighter/fresher than the Simply Orange or Minute Maid juices that I used to buy. It tastes just like the oranges I've been eating for the last month from our bowl on the counter! It smells just like the marmalade that I made last week from the bowl of oranges on the counter! It is the essence of the bowl of oranges that sat on our counter. It doesn't taste like the bowl of oranges on your counter, only the ones on my counter. Duah!

(If you have ever wondered why the brand of orange juice that you buy always tastes exactly the same from bottle to bottle, but distinctly different from another brand, click here. Be forewarned, it isn't pretty.)

It's a lot of juice – more than Ed and I will drink this week – but I'm thinking of making a mocktail to serve to my nieces who are coming out tomorrow with their French exchange student. If you have any ideas, send them my way.

Would you like to try a little marmalade instead?

   "Many people

     Think that

     Marmalade

     Is nicer.

     Would you like to try a little

     Marmalade

     Instead?”

– from The King's Breakfast by A.A. Milne

I made a batch of marmalade on Wednesday afternoon and it was quite nice. Peeling a bowl full of oranges and lemons and then chopping the peels into thin ribbons was both beautiful and fragrant.

On and off during the afternoon, I had flashes of déjà vu.  I think it is because my grandmother always served orange marmalade on her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (with the crust trimmed off). I don't think she make it herself, but kept a crock of Dundee Orange Marmalade in her hallway closet pantry. If I remember correctly, she would then use the empty jars to organize some of her sewing supplies. I wish I had some of her old jars. Aren't they fabulous?

Two forces came together to inspire me to make a batch of this citrus peel jam. The first was I had a very large bowl of citrus that I picked on our recent trip to the Juniper Club.

And secondly, my sister Kathy gifted me my mom's copy of A.A. Milne's "When We Were Very Young" and it features a funny poem about a King who wants a little bit of butter on his royal slice of bread.

Turns out the alderney cow didn't wish to oblige the dairymaid with cream for the butter and suggested that the king might like marmalade (thickly spread) instead. He did not. He wanted butter.  

I think marmalade doesn't get the respect it deserves in my part of the world. Grape jelly is more likely to be spread on U.S. pb&js. Marmalade is highly regarded in the British Isles and its many former colonies. Food writer Elizabeth Field wrote an extensive history of marmalade for her Master's in Gastronomy. Imagine that! 

I love to learn about the history of foods. It adds a whole other level of appreciation to my interest in all things culinary. According to Ms. Field, marmalade had its beginnings more than 2000 years ago when it was first made as a solid cooked quince and honey paste. 

The switch to orange marmalade happened in Scotland in the 1790s when imported Seville (bitter) oranges were used to produce a thinner form of marmalade, cooked for shorter time. Soon enough Scottish cookbook authors turned marmalade making into an art form, introducing the term "chips" for the shreds of orange rind that were included in the jam. Its popularity got a boost with the new Scottish pattern of serving marmalade as a breakfast and tea-time food rather than an after-dinner digestive. 

Janet Keiller, of Dundee, Scotland, was among the first of a series of late 18th and early 19th-century Scottish grocers' wives who established commercial marmalade factories. Her business prospered. In 1828 her son, James Keiller, joined the business and changed the name to James Keiller & Sons. (Seems to me he should have changed it to James Keiller & Mom, but he didn't ask me.)  It is still available today, but the jar is not nearly as coveted.

In addition to spreading on toast, I'm planning to mix my marmalade with some soy sauce and use it as a marinade for tonight's salmon dinner. Just realized it is almost 6:30, I better get cooking...