Mrs. Peters Chocolate Chess Pie

Yesterday was the first day of summer (although here in KY it feels like summer a lot sooner than the end of June, I assure you.) Both C and A have been working this vacation, and C is taking time off to go to the beach house owned by my maternal relatives and me in Nags Head, NC. I've been going to the beach since I was six months old, and being 53, that's a long time. I've seen things change over the years on the Outer Banks, many of which are less than pleasing.

View from the front porch at dawn.

As a child summering at the beach, life was so simple. Nags Head was not a popular vacation spot then, and the island was relatively undeveloped. There was no "French Fry Alley", no chain grocery store, no Wal-Mart (perish the thought!) If you wanted groceries you went to Harris's, where Mr. Harris ground his beef by hand, twice! When I was very young, there were only two stoplights on the whole island. A far cry from what it is now. But I can still go to the cottage, put my feet up on the front porch railing, and look at the sea, forgetting how built up it is, thank goodness. 

As a teen, I was privileged to meet Mrs. William Peters (Louise), who was affectionately called Wheezy by her friends. Her family owned the cottage three south of ours, and she had five sons. She was one of the old breed of southern women, who would move to the beach for the whole summer with her kids, her husband staying in the city to work, only visiting on weekends. My mother recalled meeting her at Harris's grocery store one day, where mom complained that the way we all ate, she had to shop every day! Mrs. Peters looked at her and plaintively said "Only once a day?"

We met because of her little Beagle dog (whose name I forget), which had been in a fight with another dog. My friend R and I took him home to her, and she brought us into the cottage, plunked us down in front of the television (a rarity at the beach at that time) and gave us cool glasses of lemonade. She told us all about her family, including her sons (of course, we were teens then) and generally was the epitome of southern graciousness.

Louise "Wheezy" Peters

I got to know her better as the summer went on and our mutual affection grew. She had no daughters, and took me under her wing, treating me with love and affection (it didn't hurt that I wound up dating one of her sons for about a year.) Being a southern woman, she cooked all the time. She had many recipes for traditional southern foods, and one special dessert recipe that she shared with me. I've made it over the years for special occasions, and it is a family favorite. The recipe is really very simple, based on a Chess Pie, but with chocolate added. Here it is, in memory of Wheezy Peters, a truly gracious Southern Lady:

Wheezy Peters' Chocolate Chess Pie
(serves eight)

Ingredients:

• 1 stick butter
• 2 squares unsweetened baking chocolate (or 5 TBSP cocoa)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• Unbaked 9" pie crust

Melt the butter together with the chocolate and place in a medium bowl. Add the brown and white sugar, mix until smooth. Fold in the eggs, the vanilla, and the salt.
Bake in the unbaked pie crust for 25 to 30 minutes at 350 degrees until the top poufs up, and/or a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. To die for!

NB: if you're using 9 1/2 inch pie pans, increase the ingredients to match. I use the following for two 9 1/2 inch pans:

• 2 1/2 sticks butter
• 5 squares chocolate
• 1 1/4 cups brown sugar
• 1 1/4 cups white sugar
• 5 eggs
• 5 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 and 1/18 tsp salt.

Memorable falls

I learned to ride as a small child, taught by my grandfather, saddle seat in one of the families American Saddlebred horses. The farm on which I learned to ride was about two hours south of where we lived, so I didn't actually have my own horse on which to take lessons as a kid. I lobbied for a horse to keep in the 'burbs of Cleveland where I grew up, but my parents both nixed that, saying "There are horses you can ride down at the farm, why should we buy you one here?" So I took lessons to the point until it was necessary to have a horse of ones own, and then stopped.

But many weekends of my youth I went to the farm and went trail riding, bombing through the woods with friends and siblings. We never thought about danger, we wore the invincibility of youth and had no fear. I would ride the tallest, rankest horse and never think twice. One of my cousins, who lived in a town near the farm, was lucky enough to ride with my grandfather almost every weekend, which she did not enjoy, while I would have happily committed crimes galore to have such a chance. The grass is always greener I guess.

Dixie and me, circa 1984

In my youth I had several glorious falls from my favorite horse, one Dixie. He was a persnickety horse, if he didn't like you, he dumped you. You had to have a gentle hand on his mouth, and a good seat to ride him. But once you made him your friend, he would teach you to fly!

One of my memorable falls was down along the creek, where R. and I were riding as teens. The trails were often overgrown, and I didn't notice as we galloped along that some of the overgrowth was thick vines. One got between my leg and the horse (we sometimes rode with saddles, sometimes bareback.) The horse was going fast and furious, and the vine was thick and sturdy. I was dragged off Dixie's backside and plopped onto the ground. The bruise that developed along my thigh was large and glorious to behold, purple and green. But I still had no fear.

Another legendary fall happened the time I had taken my church youth group to the farm for the weekend. D. wanted to ride, so I thought it would be a good idea to have him up behind me on Dixie and take a quick turn around the arena. Dixie thought this was a very bad idea, and with the slightest of effort bucked us both off. D. landed on the ground and lost his breath, I was tossed into the fence, and surely must have had a concussion, although I wasn't aware of it at the time. But still I had no fear.

Many years passed, and I was married and living in Duluth. J and C and A took riding lessons with our friends the Ns, and we had several horses by then that we boarded there, along with our goats and chickens. One day we went for a trail ride in the snowy woods (glorious!) and I rode Buddy bareback that day. Now Buddy is an older horse who has done many things; Western Pleasure, Dressage, a bit of Hunter Jumper work. He knows it all and then some. But he is not over-fond of crossing water, far preferring just to jump creeks he comes upon. That day we were about to cross a creek, and I said to Buddy, "Don't jump, don't jump!" But here's the thing about horses, they don't get the concept of "no" and "don't", so the term has null value to them. If you want them to not do something, you have to tell them to do the opposite.

So, of course, Buddy jumped the creek, and upon landing I did a glorious somersault into a snow-covered bush. It was hysterical, and I sat and laughed and laughed, as did everyone else. Since that time I've made a point of being sure to use positive terms when asking for things, had I said "Walk through the creek Buddy" I would have been much better off.

J with Mac on the Ns farm

One of the things that the Ns insisted on for their borders was helmets. Which turned out to be a very good thing. J was riding his horse in an arena there one day, when another riders horse got agitated. J's horse Mac is a large and meaningful horse, and very protective of J, so when the other horse lost his mind, Mac made some sudden maneuvers to move J out of the danger zone. Unfortunately, when he did so, J was ejected and went flying.

Now, the Ns take very good care of their farm, and keep the arena shipshape. But naturally, J managed to find the one rock in the place on which to land on his head. His helmet cracked right along the front, but saved his skull, as it was designed to do. Before that time I was a rather surly wearer of helmets, although insisting the kids wear them (I considered myself too good a rider to need one, don'tcha know.) But since then, I've always worn one, and anyone who rides here on our farm will too (well, at least any kids.) I've still got that cracked helmet in a box in the basement, and I pull it out from time to time just to tell the story of how it saved my husband from catastrophic brain damage, as it surely did. It's really simple folks, if you're riding, you should wear a helmet, I don't care how good a rider you are. Just do it.

Growing Things

I think of myself as a farmwife. But I am not the biggest success at growing things. I am a huge success with critters of all sorts: horse, goats, chickens, geese, and I know I'd rock at raising swine if J. would let me, but he won't. Plants though, well, I have mixed success with those.

When we moved into our house in '03, the previous owners had created a huge, gorgeous flower garden in front. I mean, HUGE. Now, not being a green thumb kind of girl, and being really busy that year dealing with making pens for the livestock and doing fences and getting the kids settled into new schools, I let the garden go.

I would rather clean a chicken coop than weed a garden. That's just who I am. Over the years, the flower garden has deteriorated. I have killed some of the plants. I have removed others. I have, some years, just let the weeds take over (which makes me annoyed, as I hate the way it looks, but I reach a point where doing anything at all to it seems overwhelming.)

Several years ago I paid a guy to come and redo the whole garden. When he was done it looked great. Cleaned up, weeded, new mulch applied. Looked lovely until fall, when the usual fall high winds blew all the mulch into the east pasture.

Next summer we were back to weeds. ((sigh))

This year I am going to throw in the towel and plant ground cover. I just have too much else going on to deal with it, and it's not my thing (even though I will admit to love playing with my virtual flower garden on my iPhone.) So if you ever come to our house to visit, just avert your eyes from the front flower garden, at least until the ground cover has taken hold and done its thing, ok?

In the meantime, here are some pics from my various Rose of Sharon bushes (my mom used to call these Mallow Trees, but whatever you call them, the blooms are lovely.) I've also uploaded these to my Facebook page, which you can see (and "like") here: https://www.facebook.com/FarmwifesDiary

Musings on Mothers

"Dixies" from my daughters
for Mother's Day

Today being Mother's Day, I am, naturally, thinking of my Mom, who passed away suddenly in 2007. As well, the day brings thoughts of what it means to be a mom, as I am to my two daughters.

Some people have sublime relationships with their mothers. Others have mothers who are a nightmare. I think the majority of us have relationships that are somewhere in the middle between the two extremes.

My mother and I were very different. I was (am) the quintessential tomboy, and my mom was very much a girlie-girl. She loved flowers and pretty clothes and everything feminine. I, on the other hand, was the kid who brought home every stray dog in the neighborhood, who filled the fountain in the back yard with tadpoles, who was, when I wasn't reading, a pretty athletic kid - sandlot baseball with the neighborhood boys, riding my bike for hours on end, or bombing through the woods on horseback with my friend Rachel.

Mom and I loved each other, no question there. I adored her, and my aunt tells me she called me her "treasure." But I think who I was baffled her sometimes. I flatly refused to "come out" at the local debutant ball. I didn't like shopping (which was as food and drink to her), I could have cared less about shoes (we often joked my mom was the Imelda Marcos of Ohio.) I know when we moved to Kentucky to have our own farm, she was altogether bemused at the idea of her 40-something daughter leaving a comfortable suburban life to go be "a farmer."

But for all our differences, we shared many common interests. We both love to collect things. One of my earliest memories was trailing along behind Mom at the beach as she searched for good shells and frosted glass. She had an eye for the treasure among the trash (at the beach as well as antique stores), and could pick out something fabulous even after other people had been through the area before her. From her I learned to train my eye in pattern recognition (or from her I gained the skill, not sure which.) Even now, as she did, I can walk down the beach behind other collectors and still find treasures others have passed by.

Orchids from my husband
for Mother's Day.

I get my artistic bent from my mother as well. She majored in Art History in college, and although she never made a working career of it, she was the consummate artistic scholar. She had enough information in her head to write probably ten books; on silver, porcelain and pottery, jewelry, ephemera, early American furniture, American and English painters and illustrators, authors and books (particularly children's books), vintage linens and early American quilts, the list goes on. When she died, aside from mourning her (as of course we did!) I also mourned the incredible store of knowledge that was lost. I wish she had taped some of the lectures she gave for the various societies she was a part of. I wish she'd written at least one book, so I could hold it in my hand and know it was a small part of her depth and breadth of expertise. Alas, all we have to go on is the things she left behind, not the least of which are definitive collections in several areas.

My mother also had a very green thumb (unlike me.) Her house was always filled with plants and flowers, a plethora of Christmas cactus, orchids, and always cut flowers from her garden. She had a collection of tiny antique bottles she kept on the kitchen window, into which she'd stick the blossom of the day, even if it were just a wildflower from the woods outside. Many years before her death, I purchased a number of such little bottles, which sit on my kitchen windowsill now, and into which I put tiny flowers too.

One of the plants left
from all those years ago.

When I was about twelve, my mother and I planted a bunch of cactus and succulent seeds together. My bedroom in the old house had a huge window that filled the eastern wall, with a lovely wide sill, and mom wanted to take advantage of the light. Plus, cactus were about my speed, not being the most attentive waterer. Of all those plants, several still exist. A couple are still at Dad's house, and one lives here. It's terribly overgrown and needs to be repotted, but it has several "daughters" that I am going to send off with my own girls when they get places of their own, to continue the thread binding us all together, mother, daughters, grandmother.

This past summer my younger daughter mowed a path through the south pasture to a clearing on a rise which we waggishly call "the helicopter pad" (not that we have one, but if we did, it would be the perfect place to land it.) I like to walk out there with the dogs to get their ya-yas out at least once a day. Some days, as we walk through the grass, I will see a perfect little daisy poking up out of the newly mowed area. When I was very little, I called daisies "Dixies", which amused my mother no end. So when I see such a one, I know it's my mom looking down and smiling, and sending me a Dixie to say hello.

Happy Mother's Day Mom. We miss you so...

Spring has sprung!

I've been seeing signs of an early spring this year, although I am somewhat behind with farm chores. Spring is a time of mixed emotions for me, as it's when my mom died suddenly four years ago, but it's also my favorite time of year. Spring brings thoughts of newness: new livestock babies gamboling in the fields, new chicks hatching in the incubator, new grass and flowers sending up shoots. But since Mom died, spring has also been a time of ending, which is hard to correlate with how I normally have thought about the season.

Be that as it may, spring has sprung, and life goes along tickety-boo here at the farm. The hens have finally started laying more, (I don't put lights on my large fowl birds to stimulate their production) and I've set some hatches, better later than never I suppose.

The grass has started growing in the yard and pastures, and soon James and I will have our annual disagreement about when we should start to mow. I like to start early, to avoid having it get too high and not being able to mulch. James likes to wait, as he feels once you start to mow, the grass grows much faster, and you have to mow all the time. I am not convinced that mowing makes the grass grow faster, just dunno about that.

And this year, for the first time since before the girls were born, we're going to plant a vegetable garden! We had one when we lived in Saskatoon before the girls were born. We grew all sorts of things that year, including tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, all sorts of lettuce, potatoes, peppers, squash, pumpkins, melons, the works.

At any rate, this year I purchased some wonderful organic seeds for heirloom tomatoes through Local Harvest, from their listee Happy Cat Organics, and was lucky enough to win the seeds for free during LC's birthday celebration! I'm working on finding some nice, organic seed potatoes, as those are the two things we want to focus on this year, other than the obligatory sweet corn, of course.

Not sure how we'll keep the local deer/raccoon population out of the garden. I've considered planting it right next to the goat pen, where Toby the Anatolian Shepherd Dog lives, but that area doesn't get as much sunlight as I'd like. I do have some extra electric poultry netting I might try, normally I use it in the chicken pens, but it might work around a garden. We'll see.

DD#2 and I recently discussed getting back into goats, which has been very tempting, especially since seeing the kids born to friends, especially the cute buckling born to my soaping friend, who runs Simply Eden, where you can see pics of her goaties. But James put the kibosh on that, which is probably a good thing, as I don't really have time to do dairy these days, especially if I'm adding a garden. Maybe some other year...

Not much new going on here other than the usual spring stuff, which is pretty well typified by one of my favorite New Yorker magazine cartoons, which can be seen HERE. Well, enough blathering here in this blog, off to get some work done!

As the year ends...

2010 was a busy year for the Haggarty family. I didn't get a Christmas newsletter done to put in the cards I sent out this year, so thought I'd do a blog post to catch up with everything that has gone on during the year.

Allie is a junior in high school this 2010-11 year, and as always is thriving. She made the cut to compete in the Governor's Scholar Program of KY, but unfortunately did not win one of the three coveted spots. But her 28 on her ACT (the first time taking it since 7th grade) consoled her, and we're confident she'll find her niche at the college of her choice. She's been asked to be the Grant County 4-H Poultry Project Leader for this year, a job usually done by an adult, and she's quite looking forward to that. She's my staunch helper around the farm with chores, couldn't do it without her!

Colleen graduated from Williamstown High School this year, number 4 in her class, with a GPA of something over 4.0 (I am not sure how that works, don't ask.) We were pleased to have her paternal grandparents come down from Canada for her graduation, it's always wonderful to see Fred and Shirl. She enrolled in the University of Cincinnati in the fall, in the prestigious DAAP program (Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning), but to her and our dismay, became very ill in November with a combination of Mono and Strep. This caused her to miss so much school that she decided to withdraw from DAAP (it's one of those highly competitive programs where if you miss four weeks you might as well take the year over.) Happily, she was accepted at the University of Kentucky for the winter/spring semester, and is now enrolled there as an undeclared major freshman.

James is still happily employed at the Cincinnati Enquirer as Operations Manager. He loves his job, always something new to learn, a project to tackle, a new piece of equipment to research, it's just been a wonderful place to work and we're so glad he's there! He's reached 970 hours of horseback riding time in the American Quarter Horse Recreational Ride program, and we fully expect he'll hit 1,000 hours next year. He's working on doing a seminar this spring with the local Horse Council on orienteering on horseback, and is still the Grant County KEEP (Kentucky Equine Education Project) team leader.

Laura made a big leap this year, expanding her vintage postcard business. She purchased from her father the ephemera her mother spent over 40 years collecting, and has been working hard to do more than just sell the cards themselves, but to monetize the over 10,000 images. She started out with a Christmas card collection - cards made from reproductions of the vintage images from all over the world. That went well, and she's now working on catalogues for Valentine's Day cards, and will follow those with all the other major holidays. She's also working on a line of quilt fabric blocks (amazingly, you can print on fabric from an inkjet printer); bookmarks, and magnets, all with vintage images.

All the farm and house animals are doing well, although we were sad to lose our last house cat this summer, Miss Cleo now romps at the Rainbow Bridge with her friends Babe and Kitzel. But all the horses are still with us, even Buddy, who will be 31 on January 1st. Toby and his goat charges; Zoltan and Stanley still roam the east pasture; we still have about 100 chickens in large fowl and bantam (although we're just breeding Buckeyes now); the barn cats Frodo, Samwise, and their mother Starz keep the barn and fields rodent-free, and Ziva and McGee are our Canine Early Warning System, guarding the house at all times.

We wish all our friends and family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May the coming year bring you all peace, happiness, and joy.

Guinea Fowl

Pearl Guinea Fowl

When we moved to our farm Kentucky in '03, one of the things I was sure I wanted to get was guineas. As a child growing up I would often visit my mother's family in East Liverpool, Ohio where the family has a gentlemans farm. My grandfather was particularly fond of horses and poultry (as was his father), but by the time I was older had sold most of his birds except the guineas and several mean geese.

I adored the guineas, for their ugly charm and their amazing noise. (The mean geese are worth their own story one day.) My grandmother used to say the sounds they made reminded her of a rusty gate hinge (those are the quiet noises, they make very loud ones too!) But I wanted some, if only to remind my of my grandparents, and the summer of '04 found me looking for guineas of my own.

We found a breeder in Indiana who had some for sale, and drove over there to pick up some young birds (called keets.) We brought them home, and set them up in a chicken tractor to get used to being here. Guineas have to be penned in a new place for at least four to six weeks before you allow them to roam, or they just take off.

Once we set them loose, they adjusted to free ranging and became a constant source of amusement. Guineas are not the smartest creature on the planet, and we joke that they share one brain amongst the entire group, which is why you often see them chasing each other about, for hours at a time!

Our farm has considerable road frontage, and behind our own 45 acres is another 102 which is mostly pasture and woods like ours. Across the road is our neighbor John, who has a dog named Darla. So where did the guineas decide to roam? Not behind the house, where there was freedom and safety aplenty. No. They decided to cross the road, and go play in Darlas' yard. Darla, being a dog after all, decided she found them very tasty indeed, and I could hardly be mad at her for eating them, as they were in her yard!

In the process of their daily jaunt across the road, one day several of the guineas were hit by a car and killed. The girls and I saw their bodies as we were returning from school, and I pulled into the top of the drive and got out to pick up and dispose of the bodies.

Behind us had been a pickup truck with a local hunter driving (we could tell he hunted because he had dog boxes in the back.) He pulled into the drive behind me and got out, and asked "Are those yours?"

"Yes" I replied quizzically.

"What are you going to do with them?" He asked.

"Um, I'm going to throw them away." I responded.

There was a long silence, me standing holding the dead guineas, him looking and them and then back at me. Finally it hit me.

"Do you want them?" I asked.

"Well, they sure do make good eating" he replied, "can I see them please?"

I handed the dead bodies over. Now, this was essentially road kill, right? I know people eat guineas, and their meat is actually a delicacy. But I've never eaten road kill, and wasn't going to start with birds I considered pets.

The hunter said "Yes, I'd like them if you're not going to eat them, they're in ok shape."

I told him he was welcome to them, and he drove off with the dead guineas in his truck. I shook my head, and continued down to the house, smiling to myself, and explaining to the girls what had happened.

Young guineas stuck on the roof.

To this day, we still haven't eaten one of our guineas, I just can't bring myself to do so. We have eaten a number of our chickens, but the guineas just have too much sentimental value to me to try. Whenever I look at them, I feel my grandfather smiling down at me from heaven, laughing at their antics. So from us at least, they're safe. From Darla, well, when it comes to her, they're on their own.