It is snowing briskly outside my window for the third snow storm in 4 days! The winter snow has collected halfway up my windows, but today is the day to order new baby chicks, which will arrive via delivery in less then a month. Placing my order should make the sun come out or at least make the snow stop. We always order our baby chickens from Murray McMurray because their quality is the best and they have an unbelievable selection, from the mundane to the most obscure. What is a mundane chicken? That is a chicken bred for laying eggs, not exotic and not really a bird that would be too good for later becoming a broiler or roaster. Just a good egg layer for 4 to 5 years. The consensus wants a large breasted chicken for a meat bird like Cornish Rock, which to me seems very sadly industrial and a statement of our eating public that they prefer to breed meat birds that fall over after eating and aren't able to get up until the grain in their bellies has digested.
So, what is so wrong with a chicken that is a normal size all over? I seem to remember broilers when I was a kid being normal in size - not super-sized - and oh were they flavorful! You determine what kind of chicken for laying based on what your weather is like - cold or warm. As I live in Maine I prefer old English varieties for their hardiness like Silver-laced Wyandottes, Speckled Sussex or my favorite the Buff Orpington for their very sweet nature. These all lay brown eggs which I prefer. Then I might add half a dozen obscure varieties, that's why you must get your order in very early in the season because some varieties are limited and on a first come first serve basis.
Many, many years ago there was an older man who came to our store pretty much weekly for about nine or ten years. He wasn't all that talkative, he came with a plan and left with all the things on his list and always 12 small white grapefruit. Not much conversation, not even any dialoge about the weather, even if it had rained every day in June. Things never changed. He always smelled of mothballs and pipe tobacco. Monk wore old Hathaway wool shirts, real cotton khaki trousers, leather and rubber L.L. Bean boots half laced up and we never saw him without a pipe in his mouth filled with unburned tobacco. He drove a large old pale yellow Ford Squire station wagon that looked retired from his other home in Connecticut. He came on the same day every week at roughly the same time.
A hive has been part of my menagerie for almost a year now. Our bees were transferred from a friend’s chimney (where the bees had been pretty happy for a while) to a couple of bee boxes under an olive tree. Kirk Anderson, a.k.a Kirk O’bee, did the job, and has been our bee guide ever-since. Kirk leads the the 
Shortly after noon on Saturday, I was walking down to the car rental place on 77th Street. We were off to the country to visit some friends. I was feeling a little peckish, as the British say, so I decided to grab something quick to eat on my way. On a whim – I swear I don’t do this more than once or twice a year — I popped into McDonald’s and ordered a Quarter Pounder with Cheese to go. I unwrapped it and was happily munching away as I walked down Broadway, when I ran into a friend who also happens to be a regular follower of my blog.