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Twelfth Night in Historic Camden County

















Illustration from The Granger Collection, New York


And it's always nice to have a holiday excuse to post one of Anna's recipes, this one for Twelfth Night Cake

my true love gave to me,

twelve lords a-leaping.

At first I considered the Lords of the Dance.

Like the Nicholas Brothers,


















Or Russ Tamblyn in "West Side Story".























Leapin' lizards.

Or Baryshnikov.
















Who is so good he gets two pictures.





















Lordy lordy.

But then I thought of my darling children and their shining faces on the twelfth day of Christmas, and knew it had to be marvelous, incredible leaping Lipizzaners












"Cerbero"; oil on copper, c1725, by Johann Georg von Hamilton
Cerbero was a Neapolitan brown piebald, one of Emperor Charles VI's favorite riding horses. From the collection of the Lipizzaner Museum.












"Scarramuie"; oil on copper, c1725, by Johann Georg von Hamilton
Scarramuie was a dapple-grey of the Neapolitan school, and here performs a piaffe (a trot in place) in the hands of a stable boy. From the same collection.
















"Courbette"; watercolor, 1923, by Ludwig Koch, from the same collection

For more about Lipizzaner horses, Laura recommends:

White Stallion of Lipizza by Marguerite Henry; available new from from Sonlight

Album of Horses, also by Marguerite Henry

The 1963 movie "Miracle of the White Stallions"

and for your own wee riding school, Schleich's Lipizzan horse family

And to all a goodnight.

With that, folks, Christmas is officially over at Farm School as of tomorrow and if I have the energy -- after the 12 days of Christmas, this recent blogging spurt, and the Cybils (short list to be announced Sunday, which I'll post here after swilling my coffee) -- the tree will be "planted" in a snowbank outside and the decorations returned to their boxes.

my true love gave to me,

eleven ladies dancing.

And a few of their friends,










You might know them as Rose campion (Lychnis coronaria) "Dancing Ladies", because they look like little swaying dancers in brightly-colored ballgowns. Especially if you are in the garden early in the morning before that first cup of coffee and without your glasses.

The picture above is from the online catalogue of Johnny's Selected Seeds in Maine, which offers a great variety, including organic and heirloom seed. Imagine a whole garden full of dancing ladies, for the bargain price of $1.80 -- the cost of a packet of seed.

This is the season gardeners love, planning the new year's garden while snow is still on the ground. For me this involves stacks of printed gardening catalogues (and no, it's just not the same online, though I do request them by email), a pen, Post-It notes, and a graph paper pad filched from Tom.

This recent Sioux City Journal newspaper article includes a number of good US seed and plant houses to contact for catalogues.

And here's an online Guide to Gardening by Mail, Mail Order Gardening, and Catalogs, from DavesGarden.com. Very, very thorough, and includes Canadian seed and plant companies as well; there's a nifty "Browse by North American State/Province" feature.

Canadian Gardening magazine has its 2007 list online.

I'll leave the last word to Katharine S. White, E.B. White's wife, an editor at The New Yorker, and ardent and opinionated gardener. After she retired from her editing duties, in the late 1950s, she began a series of garden pieces for the magazine. More than a few columns were reviews seed and nursery catalogues, which Mrs. White considered as seriously as any other American literature. After Mrs. White's death in 1977, her husband collected them into a delightful volume, Onward and Upward in the Garden. From her first piece, dated March 1, 1958,

For gardeners this is the season of lists and callow hopefulness; hundreds of thousands of bewitched readers are poring over their catalogues, making lists for their seed and plant orders, and dreaming their dreams. It is the season, too, when the amateur gardener like myself marvels or grumbles at the achievements of the hybridizers and frets over the idiosyncrasies of the editors and writers who get up the catalogues. They are as individualistic -- these editors and writers -- as any Faulkner or Hemingway, and they can be just as frustrating or rewarding. They have an audience equal to the most popular novelist's, and a handful of them are stylists of some note. Even the catalogues with which no man can be associated seem to have personalities of their own.

Before we examine the writers and editors, let us consider the hybridizers, and the horticulturists in general. Their slogan is not only "Bigger and Better" but "Change" -- change for the sake of change, it seems. Say you have a nice flower like the zinnia -- clean-cut, of interesting, positive form, with formal petals that are so neatly and cunningly put together, and with colors so subtle yet clear, that they have always been the delight of the still-life artist. Then look at the W. Atlee Burpee and the Joseph Harris Company catalogues and see what the seedsmen are doing to zinnias. Burpee, this year, devotes its inside front cover to full-color pictures of its Giant Hybrid Zinnias, which look exactly like great shaggy chrysanthemums. Now, I like chrysanthemums, but why should zinnias be made to look like them?

my true love gave to me, ten pipers piping. Now, you have your traditional bagpipes, and your pan pipes, piping bags for decorating cakes and cookies, lead pipe cinches, and more. But some of my oldest Christmas memories involve buying my father a new pipe. One year, when my sister and I didn't have much money, it was a corncob pipe, like Frosty's, from the tobacconist/newstand on the corner

my true love, a genuine hepcat, gave to me, nine drummers drumming. #1 Gene Krupa #2 Buddy Rich #3 Art Blakey #4 Max Roach #5 Chick Webb #6 Louie Bellson #7 Kenny Clarke #8 Cozy Cole #9 Joe Morello And some jazzy extras, just for fun: #1 vs. #2 (you modern types can see it here on YouTube) #1 + #2 #2 vs. #4

my true love gave to me, eight maids a-milking There probably aren't any dairies nowadays that use milk maids exclusively -- that would no doubt fall afoul of federal legislation -- but a surprising number in North America have begun again to offer milk in glass bottles as well as home delivery. One such outfit is the Dewitt family's Dutchmen Dairy in Sicamous, BC, whose

my true love gave to me, five gold rings. Enough with the birds already. How about some lovely old gold, including five rings found on King Tut's mummy? The website at the previous link has a children's page, "Color Me Egypt", including a link to Amira's World, a blog by a 14-year-old girl living in Luxor. (Notice how I neatly sidestepped Olympic rings and human rights

my true love gave to me, four calling birds. Apparently "calling birds" is a corruption of the original "colly" or "collie" bird, the European black bird; from the Middle English "col", or coal. And the European blackbird (Turdus merula) is really a small thrush with a melodious call, or song. I'm going to skip any recipes for blackbird pie (it probably tastes like chicken, away), in favor of

my true love gave to me, three French hens #1. It's impossible to get the legendary Poulet de Bresse in North America, but we can come close with the Blue Foot Chicken. Though it's better if you don't mind when the butcher hands over a defeathered chicken with the feet and head still attached, French style. #2. Finding French chicks, however, is easier. You can get old French

(also known as Boxing Day, also known as the day Farm School residents refuse to go to town or anywhere near emporia crowded with mad shoppers. Sledding, skiing, and eating Christmas cookies and leftover popovers for breakfast, however, are all encouraged.) my true love gave to me, two turtle doves. The Turtle Dove: oil on canvas by Sophie Gengembre* Anderson (1823-1903). "

my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree. (The gifts have been unwrapped, toys are being played with, new books read, outfits admired, the doll house is being adorned with its new finery -- Santa Claus outdid himself with this one and I'll seek if I can get some photos up in the next while with mention of an amazing Canadian source -- and I'm testing out a new popover

and I just ate waaaaay too many treats!



I did a Costco run (as well as Walmart and Petco). I'm a glutton for punishment.

I hit Costco at just the right time ~ LUNCH. They had every single food demo person they employ handing out goodies. And I think I tried them all.

(And at Costco there is no rhyme or reason to the order in which the samples are presented: there can be meat, then ice cream, then chips, then something hot and spicy, then cake, then yogurt, etc.)

Today I had bits of the following, in approximately this order:
a meat in a pocket sort of thing, an Italian style meatball, a chip with spinach dip, a brownie with whipped cream, a turkey sausage, some tomato pesto and cream cheese wrapped in a tortilla, a chocolate cupcake, something with curry, some savory meaty gooey hors d'oeuvres thing on bread, another mysterious meaty something in a pocket, a creamy fancy French cheese on bread, and red velvet cake. I passed on the bacon guy because he was shouting "BACON! COSTCO BACON! READY TO EAT JUST HEAT IT UP! BACON!" and he kind of put me off. I mean c'mon, there's no need for yelling. And I know what bacon tastes like, thank you.

So between all my stops today I was inspired to come up with new lyrics to the old 12 Days of Christmas song. Feel free to sing along~
(I will skip all the endless verses and just cut to the chase)

On the 12th day of Christmas, my VISA gave to me~
12 turkey burgers
Too much toilet paper
Lots of coffee filters
9 pounds of coffee
8 printer ink things
7 pounds of crunchies
Chicken pasta salad
Fiiiive ping pong baaalllllssss
4 kitty treats
3 bags of litter
2 loaves of bread
And a cat climbing furniture thingggggg!

The last of which is still in the back seat of the car. I have to figure out how to sneak it into the house without them seeing it. I think I have a plan. If I get out the vacuum cleaner they'll all go outside, so if I act fast I can drag the thing in and hide it in the hall closet. Wish me luck... Read the rest of this post