Variety Being The Spice And All That Crap...

(The truth about my love for birds of the domesticated sort especially)

I really do wish I could have a lot more chickens than I do. Philip is adamantly holding the line at five hens, which is so weird because he's agreed to let me raise quail instead. Such are our marital negotiations. Some men and women are negotiating the numbers of children they will have (that question has not arisen for us since the birth of our first), or whether or not to get a Hummer to compliment their outdoorsy quasi-military lifestyle, or even what color beige to paint their home. We negotiate birds.

We're allowed to have up to twelve "fowl" in McMinnville*. I love eggs. I love looking at them. I love gathering a variety of them that is inherent in a mixed flock. Some are light tan colored and more oblong, some are speckled, some are darker brown and rounder. If you are really lucky you'll also have one or two Araucanas to lay some green or blue eggs which never ceases to amuse me and perhaps a couple of banties. Banties are the dwarf version of any breed. Yes, chickens come in dwarf versions complete with little eggs. It takes two bantam eggs to equal the size of one large egg when you're cooking. So much trouble! Yet...how nice to enjoy the aesthetics of variety from the hen house.

I think cooking is as much about aesthetics as it is about taste. I don't mean, really, that it's important that you serve all your food attractively (though that is a worthy art as well), so much as I mean that when I pull out the ingredients for a recipe, I enjoy seeing my raw materials on the counter waiting to be processed into something completely different. I especially love it when those raw materials have not been given the great American standardization treatment to make them uniform. What a wonderful sight a basket of irregularly formed tomatoes is. Especially when they present themselves in a variety of shades, most of which cannot be found in the grocery store.

For the last two summers I have been enjoying the gorgeous variety of eggplants that my favorite U-pick** farm grows. They grow at least four kinds (I sometimes find up to six in their fields) so I get pale ones striped in lavender, deep black globed ones, long purple ones, long lavender ones, and white ones too. Seeing such a variety on my counter is enticing and almost subversive.***

I love eggs. I love cooking with them. I love holding them in my hands. I love to photograph them. I love to eat them. I feel about eggs the way some people must feel about an excellent rump roast or bacon.

Apparently I have quite an affinity for birds. Something I'm really only discovering now, though if I look into the past the evidence has been there all along. Let's take a brief trip down the fascinating**** birdy memory lane:

• When I was ten I spent more time hanging out in the hen house and chicken run than I did with friends. (Or I coerced my friends to hang around the hen house with me. There's photographic proof of this at my Dad's house.)

• I tried many more times than was decent to keep parakeets, who all died pretty fast from getting eaten by our many cats or scared to death by the thought of getting eaten by the many cats (the stupid birds have very weak hearts!). I know I went through at least three of them before my parents put an end to the sad parade of bird burials.

• When I lived in San Francisco I really empathized and enjoyed the pigeons that lived in the city too. In fact, many week-end days I could be found sitting on park benches in the park across the street from the Grace Cathedral carrying on a flow of chatter with the pigeons there. Or sometimes when I wanted a more exciting atmosphere I could be found carrying on very similar flows of chatter with the slightly more sophisticated pigeons of Union Square.

• Until we moved 12 hours north, we went to my dad's house every Christmas morning. Even though he's Jewish. We would have brunch there and hang out for most of the day. I think my bird love is pretty apparent by the fact that almost the first thing I do upon arrival at his house is head to the kitchen which is where Poncho lives. Poncho is a Cockatoo or a Love Bird, I'm not even sure which. What I do know is that I could be found next to his cage attempting a lively conversation with him in which I fully believed we came to a mutual understanding with each other every time.

• When visiting my old home town of Ashland Oregon I always go looking for Eggbert, a giant rooster we let loose there when we moved away. There had always been a band of escaped chickens living near the lake in Lithia park and when we moved we set our last seven chickens free. Eggbert was the only egg our hens hatched on their own with no incubator. Eggbert was majestic. I've never found the chickens again since moving away.

• Clearly it was a sign of bird love that when I deigned***** to go to the Sonoma County Fair with a neighbor friend several years ago I became embarrassingly spazzy over the chicken tent. I didn't stop talking about them for days and realized that now that I was an adult with a home I could have my own chickens!! I wasn't accounting for the New York princess though, who, like all princesses do, completely ruined my happiness (temporarily).

• When looking for a place to move to in Oregon I would not move to any city that didn't allow chickens in it's residential zones. Yes, I looked up city ordinances and zoning charts to make sure. That's the real reason we picked McMinnville. Because you're allowed to have up to twelve "fowl". Isn't it sad that my husband will only let me have five?

*Provided you meet the terms of the ordinance and provided you do not live under the evil iron hand of restrictive neighborhood CC&Rs.

**Bernards Farm

***It's possible I've used this word a little too often lately. I also almost used the word "frisson" again and I think a writer can only get away with using such words about once every six months or they may be accused of being falsely rebellious and poncey at the exact same time. That's just wrong!

****Highly subjective word in this instance.

*****I still thought I was a "city" gal and had not yet embraced my true nature. My, I really have outdone myself today with the footnotes.