Pennsylvania Vista - Carousel Farm    cfe

NJ WILD readers know that I sometimes stray across my beloved Delaware River (windows open so I can take in her aura through almost all senses) to Bucks County.  When I lived there, from 1981 through 1987, I explored every back road.

Carousel Farm Welcome

Even so, I was not aware of Carousel Farm — where animals for Broadway shows thrived on rolling fields between performances.  Many theatre people peopled Bucks County in those days, from Hammerstein onward — this may be the Bucks County connection.  Today, those supple hills bloom every summer, lavender to the horizon, its scent on the air and the sound of happy bees in my ears.

A Visitor Enjoys the Lavender  (a cloudless sulfur butterfly)

This July (2010) was clearly stressing these purple stalks, even though (I know from my life in Provence) they are drought-tolerant to the max.  Soaking hoses twined among sage-green foliage, as yet another 90-+-degree day surrounded my excursion companion and me.

Espaliered Apples Ripen

Carousel’s products are what drew me there in the first place.  Their fragrance is that of French lavender, not the less pungent, too-sweet English scent.  And their creams actually soften skin, lasting for hours, unlike too many ‘hand lotions’ which only coat then vanish.

Venerable Window

Here are scenes of July 2010.  Wander lavender fields with us:

Looking from Arbor toward Stable

Lavender Farm’s Private Haven

“Vive La France” in the middle of Bucks County

The Quiet Garden - a fine place to write poetry…

The Good Life, Carousel Farm Donkeys

Carousel Farm Beauty and Precision

(the stable is so clean, it smells only of oatmeal…)

Nobility of Yesteryear, Carousel Farm

Cloudless Sulfur [Butterfly] Sips

Stable and Espaliered Fruit

Lavender Abundance - ‘Lavender Fields Forever…’

WHY SAVE FARMS!

Tomorrow, I am returning to the Carousel, to the scent of lavender brushed by hot summerwinds, to the buzz of very happy bees, to Pennsylvania’s soft rolling hills outside Doylestown.  Here’s how it was last time.  How will tomorrow be different?  Stay tuned…

NJ WILD READERS know how I am about preserving and utilizing farmlands…

Provence-in-Pennsylvania : Carousel Farms Lavender

Carousel Farms Barn

When is a farm more than a farm?  When it’s a source of lavender, –the color, strength, extent and fragrance of lavender fields of my beloved Provence.  Near Doylestown, Pennsylvania, we are privileged to have not one but TWO lavender farms to visit.

For beauty alone, these sites are worth the journey.  For scent alone, –admittedly arriving on gentle Pennsylvania breezes, not upon the strafing mistral.  One is Peace Valley Lavender Farm, the other is called Carousel.

The pictures are of Carousel Farm, taken last September.  This haven is named for stage animals kept there for use on Broadway and at the Met, in those heady years when New Hope and Doylestown were star-studded, literally.

Algonquin Round Table bons vivants visited, bought homes, a remarkable coterie of our most successful artists and writers, residing and createing in Bucks County.  They brought along friends, enemies, lovers and family for inspiration in the country.  And when they needed live creatures for all those Broadway plays, from Carousel Farm they would come.

www.carouselfarmslavender.com

Nowadays a man from Crete, whose air is Provencal, instead tends various lavender species.  A splendid photographer, from him, you can buy not only true lavender oil, la vraie essence, but also soaps, candles, hand and body cremes [that really nourish the skin while imparting my favorite scent upon earth], as well as this superb photographer’s book of remarkable scenes.

All this and all organic!  Open only on Saturdays from 9 - 5, I made the excursion because I’ve bought Carousel Farms lavender products, in Frenchtown, in Clinton, and always been amazed (1) that the scent is that of Provencal lavender; and (2), the products work!  http://store.carouselfarmlavender.com/index.html

His lavender products, of two French and two English species of the flower, do not simply just smell good and feel good.  Hours later, my hands and arms and anywhere else are still soft, even gleaming.

One of my favorite products, –bought from a farm wagon last September, in addition to creams and real lavender oil–, is their lavender candle.  One burns it after certain cooking tasks, such as making soup or bacon…  NJ WILD readers know that I love cooking and cooking aromas, but not several hours later.  Carousel Farms’ lavender kitchen candle, –studded blossoms of real lavender embedded in opulent wax, in its square tin with the handsome Carousel label–, solves that dilemma.

Here is the all-too-humble owner’s description from his website:

The Carousel Farm, first established in 1748, has had many lives over the centuries, –once a dairy farm, later a horse farm and, in the mid-20th century, an exotic animal farm.

When we moved to the farm 7 years ago, our challenge was to put our unique imprint on the farm, maintaining its rural beauty, yet enhancing it with something beyond.

The inspiration for Carousel Farm Lavender came when we were traveling through the beautiful Provence countryside, where rolling hills are graced with old grape vines and lavender fields, against a stunning backdrop of centuries-old fieldstone barns and farmhouses.

Our farm, with its fieldstone farmhouse, 18th-century stone barn and rolling fields broken only by fieldstone walls, seemed the perfect place to replicate the South of France.

Our fields, now over four years old, are nothing short of amazing. Despite our initial worry that the harsh Northeast climate might not be ideal for the project, after testing the soil we carefully selected  four varieties of plants, both French and English, and the plants are flourishing.

We have over 15,000 organically-grown plants, each one planted, pruned and harvested by hand. The beauty of our fields is attested to by the many of local painters and photographers who spend their days drawing inspiration from the fields.

Good for the Bees, Good for the Butterflies

As you can tell, we are proud of our lavender fields, but perhaps we are most proud that, despite the striking natural beauty of Bucks County, we  have found a way to enhance this historic community with something at once rural, beautiful, unique, and–yes–all organic!

All Organic Means, Good for the Bees

Old Ways Are Best, Where Real Farming is Concerned

When Rain Blessed

Once upon a time, rain was soft and welcome, –gift of summer’s days.

And not only good for farm crops and grass, rain brought especial joy to children.

I just discovered that I had forgotten gentle rain.  I have been reading three 1970’s library books on Cape Cod, –where I summered during those years with teen-aged daughters.  One memoirist muses, “It is beginning to rain lightly.” I was thoroughly startled.  How long has it been since I experienced or even thought of ‘rain lightly’?

My mother would welcome “a good soaking rain”.  It was good for our Victory garden, products of which she would can and pickle on steamy August days, usually rainy days.  She even canned green beans, and most tomatoes.  Dill in my house right now takes me right back to Lathrup pickle days.  Rain was also good for Daddy’s ‘Creeping Bent’ grass, of which he was inordinately proud for some reason we girls could not fathom.

‘Rainy days’ for my little sister and me meant coloring, cutting out paper dolls, making scrapbooks from Mother’s shiny magazines.  In gentle rain, we would do this out on the screened-in back porch.  Rain was everywhere around; but we were safe, warm and dry.  That small square porch was entirely surrounded by blue morning glories I’d planted from seeds.  A special dappled light came through the petals even in hot sunshine.  The twiney vines braided themselves along multicolored chain-stitched supports - the only crochet skill I ever mastered.  To be out there together in the soft air, as rain sifted down all afternoon, around our little brick house and our sheltering porch, was simply magical.

Rainy day air was light on my child-skin.  Our little round arms reached out for crayons and scissors, beyond sundress straps or pinafore ruffles, — summer ‘frocks’ our mother had sewed and ironed.  I realize that we were dressed up a good deal of the time, even in rain.  Even though nobody saw us.

Best of all was paddling outdoors in one-piece homemade bathing suits.  We loved being barefoot in new puddles.  We would squat a long time on solid tanned legs, studying patterns sketched by varying combinations of drops on shallow water.  Barefoot, bare-torso’ed, bare-headed of course, that warm rain coursing along our toddler bodies like blessings.  This could have been the grace they were always prating about in church, without explaining it once.  Out in warm rain, we knew the state of grace.

Rainwater was actually good for our naturally curly hair.  We’d save rain in fat low wooden slatted buckets out at the side of the house.  The wood would swell tight with liquid, holding it for shampoos (in Castile soap) and rinses that made our hair curlier.

That rain was also good for Mother’s dark purple violets, hidden among heart-shaped leaves.  Violet blossoms seemed snipped of silk.  They would tremble in the softness of that rain.  We thought the roses looked up gratefully, lifting pink throats to sip and sip what British storybooks called ‘a mizzle of rain.’

In rain, I used to love being up in Aunt Betty’s Toledo attic, when we were taking care of her four girls and a boy. I treasured rain’s song on her roof.  Alone by the grey yet luminous attic window, I’d page and page through volumes we didn’t have at home.  There was no library in our town nor school, so Aunt Betty’s was my only one.  And I loved it best in rain.  Its patter on her roof sounded like unsteady new kittens walking around upstairs in Lathrup, Michigan, while we were down in the living room, waiting for Daddy.  I don’t remember an attic, in Michigan.  At Aunt Betty’s I’d particularly love leafing through a long set of books we never saw elsewhere: “My Book House.”

This may have been the poetic influence I have never been able to trace, having majored in science in high school and college, –no time for the Romantic (in more than one sense.)

Childhood rain made a relaxing sound, a sleepy sound.  I wasn’t a sleepy girl, so found this sensation odd and memorable.  Childhood rain was soothing as lullabyes.  Not menacing.  Not run-for-your-lives.  Rather, “Curl up here and read of new worlds.”

Now, we WOULD have to run outside, hurry the laundry off the summer lines, before it actually got wetter!  But this was not a frantic task, and often a silly one.  Pre-rain winds would wrap the (always only white) sheets around our young bodies, sometimes tripping us, while purple-black cumulo-nimbus clouds (learned for my Girl Scout weather badge) piled and piled in the west.  Tripping onto sheet tails was bad, because Creeping Bent made long green stains under the pressure of a child’s unwitting foot.

Billowing in our arms, even partly dried sheets were redolent of wind across Lake Michigan, in Traverse City or Naubinway, our favorite places on earth.  The hard part was then where to put the sheets indoors.  The Lathrup house did have long ropes all along the most unfinished basement, but I can’t imagine that I could reach them.  We had a drier the basement ofRoyal Oak.

Soft Separate Raindrops

Somehow, rain slowed our mother.  She didn’t make us run around and finish everything in rain.  We could even do things that didn’t HAVE to be done, –like making fudge in the steamy kitchen.

Soft rain meant dreamy times — sit on the window seat upstairs and imagine, while drops cascaded softly and almost as quiet as tinsel on Christmas trees.  Gaze past mother’s bearded purple and lavender iris, toward the apple tree where we could sometimes read unseen.

The world became a shimmering place on the window seat in rain.  On my narrow lap would be my fat favorite Evangeline –”dual language” - prose and poetry! but I only wanted Longfellow’s. “This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pine and the hemlock… the deep-voiced neighboring ocean…” (which I’d never seen.)

On the window-seat, I’d wish rain would continue until Daddy came home, as I wept over Evangeline’s lost love.  I would yearn for the faraway country that belonged to Little Anne of France, determining to go there someday, never guessing I would manage even to live there.

No one else in Michigan had interest in “going overseas.”  To everyone there, ‘overseas’ meant war, –Hitler, Mussolini and death.  On the window seat in rain, there was no war.  Everitt Allen, in his Cape Cod memoir, blurts, “Do not ask me which war, for all wars are the same.”  Yes, and no.  Not all wars have Hitler and Mussolini.

Our Cottage Was Only Slightly Larger than The Outermost House

Our Chatham cottage had but one floor, right on Nantucket Sound.  Every rain there was rain on the roof.  Every rain there was blessing, even the hurricane I determinedly stayed through because I wanted to feel one.  Rain on the Sound formed a whole new landscape, –waves churned along that usually peaceful surface.  Intricate drop designs would be scrawled one moment, effaced another.  The Sound would become an enormous silvery canvas.  After rain could come fogs, electric and alive.  Returning sun would create round rainbows in every fogged square of the front door screen.  Returning sun would bring back the rare birds - godwits and once a phalarope, the long-tailed jaeger down by the Light.

Nowadays, even a “30% chance of rain” triggers red alerts.  What lies in wait for us now, instead of drifty dreamy days is downpours, lightning and thunder, “line storms.”  A friend from New Jersey, who moved to a farm in the rural South, is building “a bunker” for storms.  He tells me how many feet thick the concrete is, and how broad the sand shoveled in beyond that, to hide from weather.

Today’s rains tear up the lawn here above Canal Road.  It’s a tough grass untended; not fragile, like Daddy’s, let alone vulnerable as violets.  Huge black scrapes scar this grass, open all the way to the mud, like skinned knees.  These wounds arrow down from house toward driveway.  This is what happens in run-off, and there’s run-off in every rain.  Rain-divots.  Imagine what today’s rains would do to Mother’s violets!

Today I was supposed to take a friend for her first trip on the River Line Train.  We planned to glide river town to river town all along my beloved Delaware River.  But dire forecasts, –of thunder, lightning, downpours, flooding and “line storms”, whatever those may be–, caused us to cancel our plans.  It’s beautiful now, but I don’t want to be in Camden, looking for Walt Whitman’s house, during a line storm.

Paddling in puddles came to an end when I was eleven.  As I wrote in an early poem, “One day, clouds went both ways, fast!” That day, tornadoes exploded into Flint, Michigan, not far from us.  They also ‘touched down’ in Port Huron, and Ontario, oddly south of Michigan, Canada south of the United States, wreaking untold damage - as bad as war newsreels we’d see before Saturday movies, and even bringing death.

How Lathrup skies looked, as this happened in Flint

Our father was so astounded, the next day he took us all on a tornado tour — ever the newsman.  In a nearby neighborhood, my high school friend Marion’s neighbor’s house was shattered.  Meanwhile, in Marion’s Mother’s garden, frail blue delphinium still stood upright.

After that, every rainstorm seemed fraught with thunder.  (I was only afraid of thunder - loved lightning, and knew I was being irrational and it didn’t matter a whit.  Lightning was beautiful.  I still can’t stand loud noises.)

After that, every thunderstorm brought tornado warnings.  We learned to spend time in the basement.  This had never ever been the case, until ‘Flint’.  In Lathrup, after that, to say ‘Flint’ meant ‘the tornado.’  Even as an eleven-year-old, I thought the Great Lakes might have changed temperature and/or volume, so that there was a greater contrast between the air and those broad waters, setting up long ragged tongues whirring out from the clouds, in a green-black world with its odd chemical smell.  If there were a hell, it would smell like the world before tornadoes.

In all three Cape Cod books, not one of these journal-keepers mentions living through a hurricane.  Although Everitt Allen describes a very old tumbledown house, for which “the first ravaging had been by hurricane, unprecedented for decades.”  That might’ve been 1938’s that so demolished his New England and our Long Island here.

In our growing up, there weren’t hurricane seasons.  There wasn’t even one a year.  I remember ‘Hurricane Diane’s’ ravages during High School.  A friend at the Detroit Times was named Diane.  The newsmen mercilessly teased her — until she never wanted to hear the word ‘hurricane’ ever again.  And we basically didn’t.

I never meant to long for the ‘good old days’.

However, one blessing of childhood was that rain was respite.

I yearn to return to the time of soft soaking rains.

Foods from previous Indoor Winter Farm Market, Held at D&R Greenway Land Trust

NJ WILD readers know my passion for La Belle France.  Here’s the legendary Art Buchwald’s frustrated attempt to explain our Thanksgiving to the French.  It was even harder explaining it to the Provencals, the year (1987/88) I spent on a hill above Cannes. 

I could buy a turkey at the Cannes Marche.  But cranberries?!  They sold me ‘des airelles’ - I think they may have been currants. 

I came back to America for McIntosh apples and the cranberries of the Pine Barrens.

Read this and weep…   smiles… 

Happy Thanksgiving

by any other name, still sweet.

Le Grande Thanksgiving

By Art Buchwald

Thursday, November 24, 2005; Page C03

This confidential column was leaked to me by a high government official in the Plymouth colony on the condition that I not reveal his name.

One of our most important holidays is Thanksgiving Day, known in France as le Jour de Merci Donnant .

Le Jour de Merci Donnant was first started by a group of Pilgrims ( Pelerins ) who fled from l’Angleterre before the McCarran Act to found a colony in the New World ( le Nouveau Monde ) where they could shoot Indians ( les Peaux-Rouges ) and eat turkey ( dinde ) to their hearts’ content.

They landed at a place called Plymouth (now a famous voiture Americaine ) in a wooden sailing ship called the Mayflower (or Fleur de Mai ) in 1620. But while the Pelerins were killing the dindes, the Peaux-Rouges were killing the Pelerins, and there were several hard winters ahead for both of them. The only way the Peaux-Rouges helped the Pelerins was when they taught them to grow corn ( mais ). The reason they did this was because they liked corn with their Pelerins.

In 1623, after another harsh year, the Pelerins’ crops were so good that they decided to have a celebration and give thanks because more mais was raised by the Pelerins than Pelerins were killed by Peaux-Rouges.

Every year on the Jour de Merci Donnant, parents tell their children an amusing story about the first celebration.

It concerns a brave capitaine named Miles Standish (known in France as Kilometres Deboutish) and a young, shy lieutenant named Jean Alden. Both of them were in love with a flower of Plymouth called Priscilla Mullens (no translation). The vieux capitaine said to the jeune lieutenant :

“Go to the damsel Priscilla ( allez tres vite chez Priscilla), the loveliest maiden of Plymouth ( la plus jolie demoiselle de Plymouth). Say that a blunt old captain, a man not of words but of action ( un vieux Fanfan la Tulipe ), offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of a soldier. Not in these words, you know, but this, in short, is my meaning.

“I am a maker of war ( je suis un fabricant de la guerre ) and not a maker of phrases. You, bred as a scholar ( vous, qui tes pain comme un tudiant ), can say it in elegant language, such as you read in your books of the pleadings and wooings of lovers, such as you think best adapted to win the heart of the maiden.”

Although Jean was fit to be tied ( convenable tre emballe ), friendship prevailed over love and he went to his duty. But instead of using elegant language, he blurted out his mission. Priscilla was muted with amazement and sorrow ( rendue muette par l’tonnement et las tristesse ).

At length she exclaimed, interrupting the ominous silence: “If the great captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, why does he not come himself and take the trouble to woo me?” ( Ou est-il, le vieux Kilometres? Pourquoi ne vient-il pas aupres de moi pour tenter sa chance ?)

Jean said that Kilometres Deboutish was very busy and didn’t have time for those things. He staggered on, telling what a wonderful husband Kilometres would make. Finally Priscilla arched her eyebrows and said in a tremulous voice, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, Jean?” ( Chacun a son gout. )

And so, on the fourth Thursday in November, American families sit down at a large table brimming with tasty dishes and, for the only time during the year, eat better than the French do.

No one can deny that le Jour de Merci Donnant is a grande fte and no matter how well fed American families are, they never forget to give thanks to Kilometres Deboutish, who made this great day possible.

2005Tribune Media Services

Admitting Fear of Poblanos 

Ingredients from Friends

I confess, while the world has been buying more salsa than catsup, I have been hiding from poblanos. 

This cowardice was seriously challenged last week, when Bill Rawlyk, D&R Greenway’s Director of Land Acquisition, brought in a gift of poblanos.

Bill’s generosity knows no bounds - accompanying his harvest in our 1900s barn kitchen is often a stack of fascinating recipes and how-tos.  Quite a few, last week, covered effective utilization of his handsome green chile peppers.  No more excuses.  I would take those vital vegetables home, read the suggestions.  I would honor poblanos, prepare them, eat the result.

Frankly, I’m Mexican-food-challenged, food stylist or no food stylist (for General Foods, then Director of the Test Kitchen for Tested Recipe Institute in Manhattan in the early ’60s).  I don’t know the differences among chiles, finding that whole rigamarole of preparing them distinctly off-putting.

NJ WILD readers know, my tastes turn toward France.  In all my journeys, even my own year in Provence, the hottest flavoring I encountered there was rouille, that rusty mayonnaise-like accent to the Provencal fishermen’s bouillabaisse.  Rouille did contain hot pepper, and I savored it.  I imagine that rouille’s fire came from peppers grown in the Basque country of southwest France, which I have not visited. 

Besides serious Francophilila, every Tex-Mex recipe I read calls for searing poblanos, putting them in a paper bag to rest, peeling the skin  - and o, by the way, wear rubber gloves.  No way!  I simply turn the page, often closing that magazine or cookbook.  Give me a branch or two of tarragon, a handful shallots, pinches of saffron.

But I had learned to enjoy eating what we called ‘Mexican food’, on drives from Denver to Snowmass to ski.  Our family’s Aspen trips had increased as (what we did not know was) global warming brought moss and rivulets to favorite Stowe runs during spring break.  Our final Vermont experience began with skiing Mt. Mansfield swathed in garbage bags, because it was pouring.  We gave up and returned to the Inn when water at the bottom of the run sloshed over our ski boots. 

Despite week-long lift tickets, succeeding days included watching hams being cured in maple syrup, then smoked on corncobs; watching curds turn into Cabot cheese; following steam clouds to see sap turn into syrup, lift tickets languishing in our rooms.  After that, Aspen. 

Aspen taught us what we called ‘Mexican Food.’  And we all loved it, even my formerly gastronomically deprived Swiss husband.  It was he who insisted that Princeton neighbors explore its riches with us, here and in Colorado.  Once I even made the chili here, froze it solid and carried it to our ski-out, so that I would only have to heat it when we had the girls’ friends and families over for a ski-in supper.  Imagine explaining this to Airport Security today!

But I had used Spice Islands chili powder.  I didn’t touch poblanos.

Bill Rawlyk’s farm chiles changed all that.

Into this chili had gone Bill’s poblanos, –roasted, not steamed; not peeled but cut into chunks.  With heirloom tomatoes, also from Bill’s D&R-Greenway-Restored Hunterdon County Farms.  And two kinds of local onions, as well as pale green and yellow and purple sweet peppers from my friend Betty Lies’ CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) membership at nearby Cherry Grove Farm, off Carter Road. 

Add the endearing cornbread mix from my friend Marilyn Schmidt, at Buzby’s General Store in the Pine Barrens.  Mix that comes in sewn package resembling Bill Rawlyk corn, only gingham.  Buzby’s also offers cranberry bread mix in a winey cotton pouch that could be a very ripe cranberry.  A dark blue fabric pouch holds blueberry mix.

My salad that night fairly leapt out of its bowl - Betty Lies’ greens from her CSA.  I get to use her produce membership whenever she’s away, –as at Provincetown Writers’ Workshop last week.

People can’t decide how to spell chili.

People debate over chili with anchos or chile with poblanos.  (Turns out ‘ancho’ means dried poblano.)

Chili of ground beef or chile with beef chunks. 

(Mine used local beef from Ely’s near Washington’s Crossing, Pennsylvania - still in our Delaware Valley.  My friend, foodwriter Faith Bahadurian had requested a gastropilgrimage, so that she could stock up on pork belly and sausage links.  I went for loose sausage - to eat with Rawlyk corn tonight - and Ely’s special ground beef.  What greater privilege than talking to the people who prepare the meats you bring to your table?) 

Tomes have been written over chili with kidney beans, black beans, or none.  (I had none, so there was no discussion.) 

Some add beer.  In Ohio, they serve chili with ’spaghetti noodles’.

Every colorful bite of my poblano chile held not only hefty flavors, differing flavors.  Each spoonful was also overflowing with memories.

With a soupcon of courage and a dose of adventurousness–, you can’t beat the CHILE OF FRIENDS!

HOMESICK FOR FRANCE:

“The Keys of Alexis…” 

The Home of Alexis: Chateau Prieuré-Lichine

It is no secret that, beneath my passion for New Jersey, even New Jersey’s wild nature, throbs an ever-present homesickness for France.  I would listen in shock to my Michigan friends, returning from first trips abroad, wanting to kiss the soil of America.  My response would be the polar opposite: leaving France would always feel like being ripped from the womb.

Once upon a time, it was 1964.  My Swiss-American husband’s fellowship at the Mayo Clinic was complete.  Our daughters were with my parents in Michigan.  Werner and I were in Europe at last!  — his seventh trip; my first.  We had brought our awkward American car along on the S.S. France, little knowing how stiff it would prove on twisted byways of the old world. 

 S.S. France, Underway

Our main goal was to learn art; secondarily, to meet the wines of France.  Minneapolis friends had arranged visits with their colleagues, Alexis Lichine in Bordeaux and the Bouchards of Burgundy.  It was late April when our sturdy little Rambler bumbled along narrow Bordeaux lanes.  In gingerly fashion, Werner pulled into the circular gravel driveway of Chateau Lascombes, — to be our home away from home for several days.  Our bed was in a tower, our bathroom circular, where a cricket sang and echoed.  Outside, vines stretched to the horizon.   http://www.chateau-lascombes.com/

The welcome of all who worked for Alexis Lichine know no bounds.  His right-hand-man, Tony Wood, soon took to the wheel of his Peugeot, to drive us from one legendary label to another.  Bordeaux light poured Sauternes-gold over every wall and vine and stream.  Minuscule bridges marked boundaries between domains we had known and savored in half bottles during penurious “Fellowship” years.  Mere streamlets made all the difference between a Premier Cru and vin ordinaire.  An early surprise was that many Bordeaux Chateaux did not have chateaux. 

 Chateau Lascombes bottle  

At Lascombes, an art exhibit was being installed that very afternoon: “Le Vin et La Vigne”.  We could have spent the entire day studying those paintings, enhanced by that stony chateau.  That art marked the beginning of Alexis’ commisioning French artists to design labels for vintages that needed no gilding.  But gilt light was glancing off lush vines beyond leaded windows.  Tony urged us steadily forward.  There were wines to be tasted,– most unusual wines –, at the hands of Alexis Lichine. 

 Chateau Lascombes, Alexis Lichine, Margaux

And so we were driven to meet our congenial host, over at Margaux.  Alexis proved larger than life, –that international being, whose audacious publicity had put Bordeaux wines in general and the ’59’s and 60’s on everyone’s tongue.  His French rolled with vigor that revealed his Russian forebears.  Alexis sincerely checked on our comfort in that tower room (which to this day graces the Chateau Lascombes label.)  We could reassure him that all was superb.  Alexis shared deep laughs over the resident cricket’s musical gifts. 

Chateau Prieure-Lichine Bottle, Alexis Lichine, Margaux 

Around Alexis, laughter was the norm.  Right off, he ‘took us with him’, describing a recent visit to Maxim’s, which Alexis normally scorned.  (A client made him do it.)  As Lichine attempted to order Chateau Lascombes, (whose ‘S’ is firmly pronounced), Maxim’s sommelier precisely repeated the name his way, without the S.  Alexis pounded his solid fist upon the table, bellowing, “I OWN the place!” With every refill, the Maxim’s man frostily mispronounced wine Lichine himself had crafted.

A deuxieme cru, meaning second growth, Lascombes boasts a proud motto - which could also stand for Alexis:  “second certes    …mais premier dans les esprits” – Second, certainly.  But first among spirits….

At Margaux, Alexis and Tony proceeded to introduce us to new wines we could never have known; would not meet again:  In the cellar, wine of the year, curvatures of our silver tastevins reflecting meagre light among stony walls, above earthen floors. 

Whites as reds.  Reds as rosés.  Alexis fairly gloated:  “They said it couldn’t be done!”  A genius at marketing, this man was somewhat suspect in the 1960’s wine world .  During those heady years, no one told wine’s story more memorably than Alexis.  He had a new book out on wine, an Encyclopedia, which we would purchase as soon as we moved to New Jersey, our home-to-be.  But that’s another story. 

 Each night culminated with supper at the chateau in which Alexis and his young family actually lived.  Not Margaux.  Not Lascombes – Chateau Prieuré-Lichine.  It had indeed been a priory.  We would dine at the refectory table.  Within their luminous living room, the little ones would join us.  For the first time, this Midwesterner heard French pour ‘out of the mouths of babes’.  The younger son, “Sasha”, was pressed into service to pass exquisite amuses bouches, as though it was the most normal act in the world for a five-year-old.  Sasha was alarmingly elegant, even dapper, in a lordly summer bathrobe of palest blue.  

Suddenly, his mother appeared, soundlessly, adrift in chiffon.  She was ravishing, raven-haired.  The children clustered at her multiple hems, as she deftly welcomed these guests fresh from Minnesota austerities.  Mme. Lichine of course, had been ‘born with the scarf-tying gene’, the essence of springtime.  Breezy, almost windblown, had he been present, Botticelli would have immediately taken up his brush.  My sensible white pleats and navy blouse looked even more Michigan than they had on the ship. 

Werner and Alexis were deep in machine-gun conversation.  I had never seen my husband like this.  At Minnesota dinners, I had to shepherd discussions.  I suspected a bond between these two men, residents in lands not their own.  Obeying an invisible symbol, sudden kisses, bows and curtseys passed among the family, before the children wafted upstairs. 

We were then led into the refectory, seated at a worn and gleaming table at which monks had taken frugal meals.  Along upper shelves were arrayed utensils and furnishings in use when prayer came first in these halls.  Copper basins flung back candle flames. 

My thoughts went back to that first “Dear Doctor” letter from Fritzi and Benny Haskell of Minneapolis, urging us to accept their magical mystery tour among friends while in Bordeaux and Burgundy:  “For there really is no better way to get the feeling and essence of this great wine region, other than to stay right in the midst of the vineyards.”  Indeed. 

At the end of our final night at Prieuré, Werner asked if we might purchase wine to take home with us on the Mary.  Alexis was delighted. “Ah, yes, and I will choose them myself!”, apparently his favorite task in the entire world.  My husband wrote out a simple check, half of our wine allotment for the journey. 

RMS Queen Mary, Underway

In July, a letter would meet us at Southampton, informing us of “the addition of Ch. Haut Brion 1960, because it is particularly good in this vintage, and reasonably priced.”  Alexis would describe having “kept this selection pretty much to sturdy wines that will travel well and will have some lasting ability.”  He actually apologized for having “slightly exceeded the $150 that you left with us, but you will notice that we based our prices on delivery to Cherbourg, [France – we would be embarking in England.],  so there will be nothing additional.”  Most apologetically, they requested his further payment of $37.20.  

We made reluctant farewells to our lively host and subdued hostess, Werner driving with Swiss caution along dark byways back to Lascombes.  That car, bucking every turn, finally brought us onto that rattley gravely driveway.  I was about to bound out when I heard many barking dogs.  An old phobia magnetized me to the front seat.  Although Tony Wood and others we had met lived at Lascombes, not a light was on.  Werner tugged at an embroidered fabric bell pull, then tried the front door for an interminable interval.  Then he was back in the car.

“I can’t open the door.  No one’s there.”  (We’d never needed a key – they didn’t lock the place.)  “What can we do?”  “I don’t know!”, Werner mourned, finally deciding, “We’ll have to go back.”  “To Prieuré?!”  “What else?”  “They’ll all be asleep, Werner.”  “I know…”  We’d left problems behind at the Mayo Clinic, so were seriously out of practice in resolution.

Too soon, we found ourselves at Chateau Prieuré-Lichine’s stately entryway.  That building was every bit as dark as the April midnight overhead.  Again, my husband groped for a bell.  This time, he was successful.  In a scene right out of The Night Before Christmas, Alexis  “tore open the window, threw up the sash.”  Moonlight shone on something white .  Surely he wasn’t wearing a nightgown and a cap.  I should never have said yes to that cognac after supper.  I started to shiver.

“What is it?,” asked our host, most cordially, as though he held window-courtyard dialogues every night of his life.

“We cannot get into the chateau.” 

“O.  Sorry!” 

With no more discourse, Alexis tossed something heavy and jangly in the general direction of my husband.  It echoed on the stones.  Werner called up his thanks, picked up the objects, and off we drove. 

“What is that?,” I asked, amazed at the size and the heft of whatever it was between us on the seat. 

“Keys,” marveled my again-monosyllabic Swiss.  “It looks like all of his keys.” 

I had visions of those rows and rows of warehouses lining the wharves of Bordeaux –   

“Werner, the keys to the kingdom.”

Somehow, miraculously, the dogs of Lascombes had gone to bed.  Magically, the first key of easily a hundred on that ring, worked.  The weighty door swung open with almost liquid welcome.  We felt our way in, touched our way up the stairs to the tower.  That cricket never sounded better. 

The next morning, we packed our bags, as planned, planning to depart after Mass, for which Alexis and his wife had given us easy directions.  We were still trying to be Catholic, in a land where nobody seemed to comprends meatless Fridays.  The miniature church was tucked in the midst of vines. Everything was hushed and luminous inside that townless church.  Mass sounded, as ever, a thousand times more interesting in French.  There were many faithful; as ever, more women than men.  Werner and I, among the last to arrive, squeezed into a back pew next to the aisle.

About 2/3 of the way through the ceremony, we all sat down as one.  Werner felt a discreet tap upon his aisle-side shoulder.  It was our vineyard tutor/guide, Tony Wood.

“By any chance, would you know anything about Alexis’ keys?,” asked our young mentor, obviously discomfited.  “Sorry,” Tony added, “but he can’t seem to find them…”

I managed not to laugh out loud – this sort of discretion comes easily to the Swiss. 

“Of course!,” Werner responded.  Only I would know how he struggled to keep a straight face.  “They’re out in the car.”

“Could we just get them?,” requested Tony, nearly choking upon the request. 

“Certainly,” Werner agreed.  I waved a quick farewell, watching the two backs recess down the aisle. 

Werner returned alone, managing heroically not to disturb final prayers and blessings.  “Just as I thought,” he whispered in my ear.  “We could have made off with every drop!”

An interesting post script is that our plan was to make the same request of the Bouchards in Burgundy.  I remember two things about that lunch.  One, that they served wine with the salad.  When I asked how they managed this, M. Bouchard, Père looked surprised, as he proclaimed: “Wine,… vinegar — they come from the same source.” 

And I recall Werner’s post-prandial query concerning the purchase of Bouchard wines to be sent to our ship. 

Bouchard Pere et Fils Bottles

It immediately became apparent that this was a major gaffe, an affront to new friendship.  Because of youth and Swiss ways, as well as that lovely accent, Werner pleased most people, — especially in Europe.  He could ask what was wrong with our wish, adding, “It was all right with Alexis …” 

“O!,” huffed M. Bouchard,  “…that Russian!”

[http://www.bouchard-pereetfils.com/]

Chateau Prieure-Lichine

[Prieure-Lichine demonstrates all the diversity of Margaux wines in one. Made from many scattered parcels of vines from throughout the Margaux geographical designation, the final result is necessarily complex and powerful. The chateau was founded on land originally part of a benedictine priory (prieure). Today its neighbours include chateaus Kirwan, Brane Cantenac and Boyd Cantenac. Prieure-Lichine was called Prieure Cantenac until 1953, when it was acquired by the eminent Bordeaux connoisseur and wine writer, Alexis Lichine, author of a best-selling encyclopedia of wines and spirits. This wine shows the unstinting care taken by those involved in making it.]

Brenda Jones Shares the Gift of the Green Heron

The rare and elusive green heron, with which miracle Brenda Jones opened my Monday, brought back Green Heron Memories to share with NJ WILD readers.

My first green heron arrived one bucolic summer’s afternoon, as I was reading on the wing dam in the Delaware River above New Hope.  [I lived in that arts centre from 1981 - 1987, a place where I became more of a poet, having given up wife-hood.]  Bucks County was the setting for my work as a writer and publicist, to elect Peter Kostmayer.  I wanted Peter returned as Congressman because he cherished and served the Delaware River so assiduously, so effectively.  It was Peter who managed to get the emptier stretches of ‘my’ river (that which I crossed to freedom) named “Wild and Scenic.” 

I was a Transition Consultant then, working eerily early and all too late to assist clients in catalyzing change, or in dealing with change thrust upon them.  Because of their work schedules, I sometimes had afternoons open - and I turned to the Delaware to be restored.  When I see the wing dam now, I cannot believe I made it my own then, my haven, my reading site.  The river was gentle at my back, lowering light a curious pink-gold that I encounter nowhere else. 

Probably deep in Wendell Berry or Ed Abbey, I was pretty surprised to hear a flutter of wings to my left.  I moved my eyes but not my head, to encounter this compact, angular, greeny-iridescent, sharp-beaked, large-eyed creature right at my side.  For so long as I stayed there reading, the unknown bird remained.  No angel will be more of a surprise, more of a privilege.  I had to go home to my Peterson’s Guide to discover it was what was then called the Little Green Heron.

After my year (87/88) in Provence, I still needed a setting other than Princeton:  Savannah, Georgia, held dear friends and became my new home in 1988/89.  There I lived literally in slaves’ quarters, impeccably updated. Read the rest of this entry »

Marty Schwartz, Gallery 14, Princeton Photography Club, captures Winter’s Stark Majesty

Winter needs a press agent. I volunteer. Spring is seriously overrated, winter unfairly castigated. My love affair with this season sneaked up on me. Having grown up in Michigan, then begun married life in gelid Minnesota, I had considered winter my enemy. Until I moved, that is, [1987 - 1989], first to Provence, then to Savannah, Georgia.

Living through two snowless years [well, flakes did descend, once in each place] birthed in me a passion for winter that I never expected to hold. I didn’t WANT marguerites [airy white daisies] in January, as in Cannes. I didn’t LIKE Georgia’s year-‘round roses!

Living without the crimsons and scarlets of autumn was bad enough. Come December, I found myself aching for the sculptural starkness of leafless trees. I required January’s tumultuous gold/purple skies, clouds scudding like galleons before a gale. I was stunned, in 1989, to re-encounter in New Jersey’s weed fields, whispers of rose and mauve and lavender. To have winter pour over me tumults of brass and bronze. New Jersey’s winter palette still stuns me — all subtlety and minimalism, –a potpourri of hues I insist on calling warm.

Even though editors tend to think Nature ends with Labor Day, Read the rest of this entry »