Nothing Like Chicken

Morning chores

Melvin showed up yesterday afternoon around 4:00; owing to the so-called “polar vortex” (otherwise known as January in northern Vermont… I mean really, now, can we just cut the crap with all this hyperbolic weather language?), his tractor wouldn’t start. This was problematic, because Melvin feeds round bales to his 30 milkers, and round bales weigh in the neighborhood of 1,000-pounds, and 1,000-pounds is a good bit more than he is able to lift by hand. Heck, even I can manage no more than 900, and that’s on a good day.

No problem, says I, I’ll fire up our tractor and bring you a couple bales (his bales are stacked at the end of our driveway, adjacent his primary hay field). It’s my pleasure, says I. Over the years, Melvin has done so much for us – loaned us equipment, bred our cows, answered innumerable questions, granted us free and unfettered access to his 100+ acres of field and woods – that it is particularly pleasing to return a small favor. So I bundled up and tromped out the tractor and… well, you can see where this is going. She wouldn’t start. Well, ok, she started, but she wouldn’t stay started. Diesel fuel has a habit of “gelling” in cold weather and I suspect this is what has happened to ours, particularly since it was purchased back in the fall, before the fuel dealers were distributing winter blend diesel. Anyhow. Now you know more about diesel fuel than you probably wanted to, but hey. You never know when it might come in handy.

So what we did (and this was really pretty damn fun) was take our truck and back it up to the big pile of bales at the end of our driveway, and then Melvin and Penny and I clambered up on top of the pile, which is three bales tall and therefore about 16 or 17 feet off the ground at its apex, and pushed with all our combined might until – bombs away! – we dislodged a bale and it tumbled down into the bed of the truck. Then the three of us wedged ourselves into the cab of the truck and drove down to the barn, where I backed up to the opening through which Melvin loads the bales which then get rolled down the stairs into the milk room to be opened and unfurled down the long aisle between the two rows of milkers who eye the hay with a particular anticipation that reminds me of myself when a sausage is just about to come off the pan and the outer layer is just a teensy bit charred and the inside is all soft and hot and full of sausage juice. Yeah. You know what I’m talkin’ ’bout.

We muckled the bales off the truck and I took Penny home, then returned to help Melvin feed out, since it was getting late. And that is really the end of my story, which has no point except that it is always quietly pleasing to me when the world works like this, when people come together to do something that is normally done by machine, and furthermore when there is laughter and merriment along the way, even in the face of numbing toes and fingers and the knowledge that tomorrow it’s not supposed to be any warmer. Which means we’ll probably do it all over again.

Note: Given the interest in our food, I thought it might be fun to include a meal in every post. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not terribly keen on writing about food, I think because I don’t often know what to say about food. Michael Pollan, I am not. But then, doing this doesn’t require that I know what to say, does it? So, without further ado, dinner last night (by-the-by, feel free to ask questions regarding origins, process, etc of any of the meals I post), which tasted nothing like chicken but was actually quite delicious, especially in the aftermath of the aforementioned exploits. 

Beaver stew

Stewed beaver (well, duh)

Carrots 

‘taters

mystery herbs and spices

Chicken broth

Celery leaves