BEES AND CHICKENS

Fancy F eggs

Elizabeth is a beekeeper.  You may call her an “apiarists” or “apiculturists” or a “honey farmer.”  They are all the same.  She’s a hobby bee keeper but she harvests enough honey each year to fill and sell off several jars. Once upon a time, she was a jewelry maker and I guess she still is but not so much now. She’s still an artist; artists pay more attention than the rest of us. They pay attention to everything!  That’s why I was never a good artist: I go for the Big Picture and lose the detail.

Anyway, Elizabeth pays attention and that probably helps with the bee thing.

I read that if you eat honey produced by bees in your particular locale you get allergy relief. It has something to do with the pollen.  I haven’t tested this myself even though I have some of Elizabeth’s bees’ honey; she only lives about 8 miles from me so the pollen should be basically the same. It’s the quantity part that trips me up. Exactly how much must one consume for the anti-allergy component to kick in?  And allergies to what exactly? I suspect respiratory ailments but not nut allergies or wool allergies. Another detail that I missed along the way.

Two Green Eggs

I admire Elizabeth and her hobby. It’s seems to me it’s on a higher level then say the hobby of collecting most things which can easily slip into hoarding and degrade the environment by the very nature of manufacturing more of whatever it is you collect. And while I truly appreciate all the  animal shelters and the heroic work they do, I’ve come to believe that we must begin on a much more basic level - lower on the food chain. Bees are a good place to begin, not the very bottom but close enough. 

Catherine Delphie is also a detail person but I don’t know her. She raises chickens.

Catherine trained as a medical illustrator and graphic designer and I guess she still works at that job sometimes. She fell in love with Aaron Dunn, a landscape architect, and together they bought a 15 acre farm in Hillsdale, New York, and began The Fancy F chicken farm. 

Everybody wants to raise chickens these days; it’s like the Pet Rock of urban farming. With chickens, you get eggs and the Fancy F breeds heritage and rare chickens for the colored eggs they produce and I’m totally smitten with these eggs.  Not only are they beautiful all by themselves (we’re talking shells here. I’m pretty sure that the insides all look the same  - yellow/white, a nice combination but nothing to write home about.) Catherine designed and found an old fashioned box factory to manufacture gorgeous egg crates. This is what an artist would do - attention to detail.  

more eggs

You can buy Fancy F eggs (in crates) from the Copake General Store which is where Margaret Roach lives.  Have you been there? Look up her blog -  “A Way to the Garden” - and visit her garden if you’re ever nearby. It’s worth the stop. She also is super-aware of detail but I actually think she might fall into the “obsessive” category which is a whole different kettle of fish. 

the Martha Stewart collection