My newest Heritage Jersey calf, Rose Etta, is coolly unconcerned, calm, and ALL ABOUT nonchalant when approaching my chickens, but …
… as soon as she’s within striking distance, she switches into high gear, breakneck speed. “AaaaRCK, run for your life!!!!” And then, three minutes later, all is calm again. The chickens seem to love the action and entertainment of it all because they have to travel quite a distance to be in my cows’ pasture this time of year. Waddle, waddle, cluck, cluck, cluck, there’s never anything exciting to do around here. Just a lot of laying ’round. All lay and little excitement.
Momma Maizy watches patiently, “Kids these days.”
Daniel and Mirra of The Perennial Plate were researching fascinating food stories to investigate during their trip to Mexico, and they encountered multiple people with the same recommendation:
Speak with Amado Ramirez Leyva of the Itanoní Tortillería in Oaxaca.
Amado, they said, is the corn guru.
Photo by Alejandro Linares Garcia via Wikimedia Commons
Renowned chef Rick Bayless is one of those who revere him. “Amado Ramirez Leyva believes that corn, domesticated some 9,000 years ago in Mexico, is the basis of Mexican culture,” says Bayless’ website. “From championing the protection of ancient varieties, to cooking and grinding it into masa for tortillas, Amado just might be the corn guru of Oaxaca.”
Daniel was intrigued. “His restaurant serves only the most traditional of Mexican foods, showcasing the various organic corns, harvested by local Oaxacan farmers in their purest form. But beyond the taste of history and tradition, Amado brings a poetic truth about the power of this ancient grain.”
Watch the resulting video, “The Flower of Corn,” and feel your appreciation for this golden … well, rainbow colored … grain bloom anew.
“Love is in the air. Just as the New York Times bestseller Unlikely Friendships documented incredible stories of interspecies bonds, Unlikely Loves offers a heartwarming look at animals who have a deep, loving attachment to each other.”
Author Jennifer S. Holland interviewed scientists, zoologists, and animal caretakers from around the world. You don’t want to miss reading about the girl and the moose.
Or the hen and the pups.
Or miss a good happy cry when you get to the part about the Dalmatian who cares for a motherless newborn lamb.
With 43 stories, Unlikely Loves shows us that love means never having to say you’re different.
Ah, the sounds of morning …
Birds singing,
Photo by Brian Robert Marshall via Wikimedia Commons
tea kettle pouring,
Photo by Patrick George via Wikimedia Commons
and the pelting of peas upon windowpanes.
Photo by Parvathisri via Wikimedia Commons
Curious?
I thought you might be.
Pea pelting was the work of “knocker ups” in England and Ireland before alarm clocks put an end to the profession.
Note, gentle reader, that “knocking up” bore no resemblance to our modern slang terminology (ahem).
In fact, it was a valued service generally provided by elderly women and men, and occasionally undertaken by police constables looking to pad their paychecks during early-morning patrols.
Each morning, the knocker up was charged with rousing sleeping people so they could get to work on time. She would use a heavy stick called a truncheon to knock on clients’ first-floor doors. For residents above arm’s reach, the knocker up would wield a long stick, often made of bamboo, to tap upper-story windows.
Image courtesy of Au Bout de la Route blog
Some of the more adventurous knocker ups, like Mary Smith of London’s Brenton Street (shown below), employed pea shooters to hurl dried peas at windows until the sleeper within woke up.
Image courtesy of Basilica Fields blog
In return for their services, knocker-ups were paid a few pence a week.
Now you know!
Buy props used in MaryJane’s books and magazine!
5% of profits will benefit www.firstbook.org, a non-profit that provides new books to children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Here’s how:
MaryJane will post a photo and a description of a prop and its cost along with a few details as to its condition here: https://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/MaryJanesCurations. It’s a playful way to be the new owner of a little bit of farm herstory.
