On the Farm

I’m a little hung up on chickens. Before I moved to California, I didn’t really realize that one could successfully raise laying chickens in urban (or, perhaps more accurately suburban) settings. Maybe having a couple of chickens in your back yard is a little eccentric, but I’m taken with the idea of having a little eggmobile a la Polyface farm in my backyard. The thought of really knowing that your eggs came from beaked, ground-scratching chickens is pretty comforting. Ah, but my chicken dreams will have to wait until I have a house, I think. Until then, I’ll just drool over the “tractor” gallery at The City Chicken.

On another pastoral note, I brain-stumbled onto a though about a book that my father used to read to us as children, One Horse Farm. The story, if I remember correctly, is about a farm horse that is replaced by a tractor. It is one of the children’s books that I remember most vividly, partially for the stylized fifties artwork in it. It turns out that the author and illustrator, Dahlov Ipcar, is not only still alive, but also still a working artist. I’m going to have to keep my eyes open for prints.

On the potato front, a coworker suggested I just drop my potato affectations (boiling with the skin on, ricing, and hot butter before warm cream to make my favorite fluffy and ethereal mashed potatoes), and do a rustic, skin-and-all mash. I just don’t know.