how now, brown cow

You might remember that this summer, I spent some serious time communing with cows (click). A piece of the experience appears in the October edition of Saveur Magazine.

I suggest picking up a copy--the kitchen staff was testing this issue's recipes while I worked in the editorial office this summer. The beet stew, lamb with salsa verde, and cinnamon coffee cake are especially outstanding.


My personal highlight begins on page 12: a love letter to my mom, our family's farm, and Elsie the Cow. (click.)

Here's mom at the farm, finding the photo of her grandparents that shows up in the magazine.

sets in the west

The sun may be rising in the east, but for the time being it's setting on my days in Western Australia.

sara

looks so pretty making quesadillas in her kitchen.

crocodile hunters

Here's Doug a while back at a costume party in New Zealand, in a moment of foreshadowing before the big move to Australia.

While he tamed the cows at the farm yesterday Sara, Bella, Maizie and I checked out a local wildlife park.


Our first crocodile...and as long as we're reinforcing Australian stereotypes...

Why yes, there are kangaroos all over the place.


It's good to wear black to these places. One never knows how she may end up accessorizing.

Today at the beach, the wee naturalist in training.

The spirit of Steve Irwin lives on...look what came to visit a few feet off the shore.

I have had the weirdest day.

First photo of the day:


"Has anyone seen my tiara?"
Maizie's wand must have had some bizarre malfunction when she cast a spell on me this morning. Within an hour I was sitting shotgun with a perfect stranger doing donuts in a mudpit.

That vehicle is a 1972 Torana Ute. Here's Shane, the driver, who also built the car.

Us Yanks might compare a Ute to an El Camino, but we would be grossly underestimating their significance. Here in Australia, Utes are not just utility vehicles with extra room in the back, they are a subculture and a lifestyle.

People drive from all over the country traveling to Ute Musters where they can race through the bush and burn out in the mud. It so happens that the first annual Busselton Ute Muster is this weekend, just a few minutes from the farm. So Brother Brown dropped me off to have a look while he checked on his cows.


Truly I don't know how to string this series of events into something coherent for you, so I'll just tell you what happened.

I spent a couple of hours chatting with guys like Paul, pictured above, who drove with two mates from Perth, Shane, who took me for the spin in the mudpit, and members of the Rebels Motorcycle Club who put on the event. All the races and action were a bit delayed due to some heavy tension between the bikers and the police, so I took a family beach break midday.


There's Sara with the babes and the Indian Ocean. She took them for a walk while Doug recovered from a jellyfish attack that made mine yesterday look like a mosquito bite.

On the way home we took a small detour to go for a kangaroo hunt. Bella and Maizie thought it was silly I'd never seen one.


I have now. Here are three standing at attention in the paddock. We got a bit lost in bush, but after half an hour of bumping through the outback we found our way back to the road.

While Bella and Maizie had a bath and Sara made dinner I headed back to see how things were shaping up at the Ute Muster.

The cops had left and happy hour was warming up nicely.

Shane was back in the bullring showing off for the young bucks on the haybales.


I stayed to watch the sunset and circle work, which is what they call donuts here, and made it home in time for dinner and easter egg filling.


It seems exploring rural Australia may bring adventures similar to the New Zealand chronicles, in terms of sheer randomness. (Remember the day Mr. Universe turned up?)


It's just another day in the outback: fairies, mudpits, bikers, jellyfish, kangaroos and easter eggs. Who knows what the next tap from Maizie's magic wand will bring...

today: western australia skies

louco por cocoa

I've made it back to Bahia, the northeastern state where I fell in love with Brazil six years ago.

This is a place where African, South American and European culture mix against stunning natural backdrops. The result is nothing short of magic.


Over the last week I've caught waves in a little surf town called Itacaré and Bridget and I luxuriated in our own flashy beach bungalow miles from anywhere. But nothing came close to my journey to Diego Badaró's Fazenda Monte Alegre, a cocoa farm in the middle of the Atlantic Rainforest.

Due to some less than magical technical issues, I've only been able to upload a random few of the photos from the Fazenda for the time being. There will be more to come, I promise. But for now I just have one night to write and get organized for my journey to the Amazon tomorrow, so they'll have to do for the interim.


I knew when I read about Diego Badaró last year in Bill Buford's New Yorker story about cacau (the fruit that we get chocolate from), that he was someone I had to meet. If anyone wants to read that article, it is riveting, hilarious and informative and I'll be happy to email it to you.

My grande amigo, Jeremy Black, who you may remember from the New Zealand chronicles, connected us one drizzly April night at the bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Jeremy and Diego's respective crops (açai and cacao) are awesome in that they are cultivated in ways that preserve their natural settings, in both cases, rainforests of Brazil.


I have always known I loved chocolate, but had no idea about the Mata Atlantica, Atlantic Rainforest, until Diego picked me up at my pousada in Itacaré and took me there earlier this week.It is magic.

This is what the view along the road to the farm looked like, after many hours of bumping along with Diego and his dogs in his Land Rover. It was pretty dark by the time we arrived, and the next day I awoke to an unbelievable journey through the forest, which is also the farm.

Here is a cacao fruit on the tree.

This is a young tree from a Mexican seed of Aztec origins that I got to plant with my own two hands. Already I cannot wait to go back to check on its progress.


This is what seeds look like after they have been fermented and left to dry under retractable roofs of the barns on the farm. That orange mark on my hand is not the result of self-tanner gone bad, but rather the pigment from a forest flower.

This is the view from the roof where the beans were drying. After a day of exploring the forest, we ended up here while the shadows got long.

Here I am, yet again, at the end of one of the best days of all time, lying on a bed of warm cacao beans.

If you read that Bill Buford article, or Jorge Amado's The Violent Land you'll know that the Badaró family is a huge part of the history of cacau in Brazil--a totally fascinating tale of bloodshed, romance and chocolate along the Rio de Contas. Diego's passion for the Atlantic Rainforest is contagious and the potential for cacao to regenerate both the nature and the economy of this part of Bahia is compelling.

This is only the very beginning of this story.

As soon as I am able I'll post more photos and tales of Bahia. But tomorrow, it's off the the Amazon: the Rio Arapiuns, and then the Sambazon plant in Macapá.


Goodnight from under the Baiano crescent moon.

green kiwis: the chook house

Happy Earth Day.

Don't roll your eyes at me, read on, this one's got a music video too.

Nothing says domestic bliss like feeding your own chickens in your pajamas, as Bella demonstrates below. So Sara asked Doug for some chickens for Christmas.

As you'll know if you've been following this blog, Doug's no ordinary dad. If someone's kid wants to go fishing he'll help 'em hook an ancient eel with rabbit for bait
(see http://jaybird55.blogspot.com/2008/01/saturday_07.html), and so on.

So, when Sara said she wanted chickens Doug elected to give them to her in style and went about converting the family carport into a chook-house.



He built the house out of entirely reclaimed materials, mostly from the farm.


Here, progress continues. That old red door is one of my favorites.


So, after a few months of after-dinner construction, the house was ready for its first tenants. Sara, Bella and I hit the road for Roxburgh, home of:

We got our first chickens at McLean's, three saucy redheads from Roxburgh.


Sara just went for it and stuck them on their perch as if she'd been chicken farming her whole life.


On the ride home from MacLean's we asked Bella what she thought we should do to make the chickens feel welcome. Without hesitation, she answered, "sing them 'Twinkle Star.'" So that's what we're doing here. I think it's actually a nice thing to do for any house guest or new roommate--sort of breaks the ice.

Eventually we added four more to the family, as Sara felt having three that all looked alike was pretty boring.

The shot below shows the chook-house in the background in its frontyard context, just to give you an idea. This photo was actually taken for http://www.blogger.com/www.scoopitupgirl.com, which Moose is using to try to compete with me for the distinction of having the slowest-updating blog.

Today the New York Times ran a story about the gross carbon footprint of food imported from far away. The cover girl for the article was none other than the kiwi, which is enjoying a longer selling season now that the Italians have poached New Zealand's national fruit. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/business/worldbusiness/26food.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

So Sara and Doug, my favorite kiwi-fruits, are totally spot-on as usual. Bella's not only collecting five eggs a day from "the girls," she's also bringing all the kitchen scraps out for them to eat. Neighboring kids like Harry (above) are totally into it too.


They're not doing it for the bragging rights (which are extensive), or even because Michael Pollan told them to: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html?scp=2&sq=michael+pollan&st=nyt
It's just a labor of love and fun. What's more environmentally-friendly fun than hunting around for old hinges and singing lullabies to poultry? If you find something, especially something that I can do now that I'm back in Brooklyn, let me know.