The Venerable Chicken

The other day I was working in my garden, focused on ripping out some vines of Oregon Grape, when I looked up and saw the neighbor's brown and white chicken standing next to my strawberry patch. She was eyeing at me with those chicken eyes, bobbing that chicken head. "A chicken." I said aloud to the fella, who was also in the backyard. My first thought was, 'What should I do?' My second thought was, 'I need to shoo it back to the neighbors yard.' As if it was a serious offense to have someone else's chicken in my yard. But then I thought, 'How lovely.'

Working in the garden, alongside a chicken. What a peaceful moment: at work and enjoying the garden together.

The neighbor's chickens enjoying their freedom

I had noticed several weeks before that the neighbors had stopped penning their chickens. The daughter and I had enjoyed peering over the fence at the chickens since last summer. Sometimes they were in their pen but sometimes they hid in their coop. Soon after I noticed that they had been "freed" to explore their backyard, I was looking out of my kitchen window and saw a grey chicken in the middle of our green lawn. "There's a chicken in the backyard!" I yelled to my two-year-old daughter. I grabbed her up and ran outside, so she could see it. (Chickens are very exciting to a two-year-old and, therefore, the mother of a two-year-old.) Unfortunately, us running outside scared the chicken back through the decayed spot at the bottom of fence that divides our yard with the neighbor's yard. So the chicken escaped to the safety of her yard and away from shrieks and stares. The daughter was disappointed. I was disappointed.

What is it with chickens? They are beautiful with their fluffy, feathered bodies, long necks, tiny heads, and slight awkwardness. They vary in kind, some with frizzy feathers or colorful plumes or fancy feet. They move about with unthinking purpose. They don't seem to want to bother anyone, although I have never kept chickens or spent much time with them, so I don't really know. Really the most I've seen of chickens is at the fair or on a public farm.

Diablo

Fancy chicken

Shaggy chicken

I enjoy looking at them in their cages, thinking which ones I might like visit every day, if I kept chickens. They are intriguing creatures. When I was about eight years old, I stuck my finger into the chicken cage at the county fair, despite signs stating, "Don't put fingers in cages." Getting your finger pecked by a chicken hurts like hell, but mostly I felt embarrassed for not defying the sign's clear warning.

Don't put your finger in that cage little girl! 

I bumped into my neighbor at the store and told her about the renegade chickens coming through the fence. Now there is a board blocking the hole. So, no more escaped chickens. My strawberry patch runs along the fence and I had been tossing the strawberries that the slugs had gotten to along the fence line, thinking they would just dry out. However, I noticed that the berries were disappearing. Then one day when was in the patch, I saw a little chicken head bob through the fence and nab up the half-slug-eaten berries. A delightful highlight of my garden is this mutually beneficial arrangement.

Count Me In

It's raining. It is March and, of course, it is raining. This is the time of year where I really look forward to summer: sunshine, heat, late evenings, berries and cucumbers, no coats or scarves, outdoor potlucks and fairs. I start getting restless for all this when the cold drippy rain hinders me from going outside, rather than making me feel cozy being inside.

So two years ago, to help negate the winter doldrums, I decided to host a fair for friends and family.

Thanks to my friend Jim for coming up with the name Count Me In. I am not good at coming up with names. Table Settings, Arts & Crafts, and Baking were the categories for submission. Voting comprised simply of everyone voting for their favorite in each category. I had voted in the People's Choice Awards at the Clackamas County Fair and it felt like an inner circle, picking the one you liked the best. At the Count Me In Fair, the submissions were rich in creativity and kitch: mounted glitter gun, Lego Tardis, plated hair. And besides the fair entries, we enjoyed a crock pot of nacho cheese, homemade pickles and preserves, even live accordion music and singing. My friends and family came with their best fair-foot forward.

Table Settings

Hair Gourmet

Riparian Entertainments

Folklore Forest

Intergalactic ET Mealtime

Elegant Eating

The Winner: I Am Alone

Arts & Crafts

The Winner

Baking

The Winner: Donut Muffins

In the Fair Basement

Sampling Canned Goods

Nacho Cheese

Ickus

A little Edelweiss

Announcing the Winners

The Winners

And the Rest

 It turned out better than I expected. I was impressed with the number of submissions, especially the gung ho attitude toward the table settings. This month we will be putting on the 2nd Ever Count Me In Fair. We are changing things up a bit by having separate kids submissions and we are forgoing table settings for collections. We changed from evening to a middle of the afternoon time, to make it more family friendly. And instead of a basement, the fair will be hosted in a pavilion (aka living and dining rooms). I am looking forward to some creative arts and crafts, inspired or unusual collections, and baked wonderfulness.

Collections on Show at a County Fair

Mid-August. A great time of year to go to a County Fair. The Fella, the Baby, the Friend, and I went to the Clackamas County Fair on the last day. Usually I like to go on one of the first days, but this year our schedules meshed on a Sunday. I was impressed that everything still looked pretty good: the veggies were a bit shriveled, but holding on; many of the dahlias looked gorgeous that I think they must have been replaced; and the cakes and pies were not buzzing with flies, so those glass cases must help.

Nachos with creamy cheese, grange hall displays, a million kinds of pie, fancy chickens, piglets and pygmy goats, 4-H-made tunics and educational poster boards. All these are highlights.

But a must-see for me is the arts and craft building. The basement is always a bit spooky with random flowers and vegetables that are not displayed with the other flowers and vegetables in another area of the fairgrounds. Why are they in this basement? How are they different than the other flowers and veg? We give a quick sweep through here and head up to the main floor, where the cakes, cookies, and canned goods are on display and the table settings wrap around the room. This year there was a new category.

Chocolate cake made by men! I told the Fella he should definitely enter next year, as he has a few chocolate cakes under his belt. I loved that the fair poobahs decided the men needed their own category in which to compete. Bless them. From the main floor we go up to my favorite part, the hot and creaky second floor, where they hang the quilts, paintings, and photography, and house under glass all sorts of hand-made artifacts: from dresses to baby books.

One of the most amusing aspects on this floor is the collections. I am not a collector. I think knick-knacks take up too much space. To know that a person has amassed an assortment of an all-the-same something and decided to put it in the fair is endlessly fascinating. Don't get me wrong, I have interest in many things. I like my cooking equipment and my set of Betsy-Tacy books and the books about those books. But I don't know if I have a collection worthy of entering in a fair.

One of the first collections that I recall from a fair several years ago was famous buildings--Taj Mahal, Frank Lloyd Wright--made out of Popsicle sticks, done by a 90-year-old man. Both handmade and a collection. But this year's collections were the best I had ever seen.

Gone with the Wind fanaticism

J-E-L-L-O

Soap Savers? What are these things?

Thanks Collector and Fair-enterer. Now we know. 

British Royal Family Collection

Audrey Hepburn. Who doesn't love her?

Overall, the collections were entertaining and educational. I especially thought of my friend, Jen, who loves Gone with the Wind, the Royal Family, and traveling back in time, and who had to miss the fair this year. So, Jen, this post is for you.

Tired fair-goer

Koren's Blue Ribbon Cornflake Macaroons

When my sister, Koren, was about 10 years old she entered cookies in the Polk County Fair. She was pretty confident and excited about them. My mother had entered cookies for the past few years and never won, so Mom warned her several times, "Don't get too excited.You might not win anything." Koren ended up winning not only the blue ribbon for her age group, but the grand prize, a bag of sugar! Mom was flabbergasted. Koren's self-assurance was maintained.

Following is the recipe for Koren's Blue Ribbon Cornflake Macaroons. The recipe comes from my Grandma Gertie Brinkman. According to my mother, "I think the brown paper bag has a play in the cooking." I made them recently and they were very easy and surprisingly good. Surprisingly, because I don't really like meringue. But they had a nice sweetness from the sugar and coconut and a good crunch from the cornflakes.

Cornflake Macaroons
2 egg whites
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups cornflakes
1/2 cup coconut

Beat egg whites until stiff. Mix sugar, salt and add slowly to the egg whites. Beat until smooth. Fold in cornflakes. Drop a rounded teaspoon of batter onto a baking sheet covered with a brown paper bag. Bake at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes. 

Note: Even though the cookies cooked perfectly, I had a hard time getting them off the brown paper bag. I ended up sliding a knife under each cookie, scraping it off the bag. 

I brought some of the cookies over to my sister and her family after I made them. She told me she didn't really like the cookies when she was a kid and never made them again after her big win. But she tried one of mine and thought it was delicious. My 8 year old niece loved them.  She wondered if they had marshmallow in them. Koren and I figured that those judges 30 years ago were just tired of chocolate chip, snickerdoodles, and peanut butter.