Unwelcomed Winter Visitor at The Farm                                                      by Tom Motley

The red colt, Charlie, and Eli, the little miniature Sicilian donkey were recently found trespassing in the chicken coop. Literally scrounging around for chicken feed, the two equine bandits had managed to wiggle their fat bodies through the narrow, but left-open screen-door of the chicken yard.

These two young farm-slackers would like me to think them nutritionally deprived, even to the point of pity. But Eli’s too round belly belies him having missed any meals. Infant colt Charlie follows tiny Eli’s every lead, so hasn’t any idea that in less than a year, there’s no way his future big Quarter Horse butt will be able to pass through the chicken coop door. Eli, the miniature, of course has reached his full potential height. He was hoping, I’m sure, to make it to an expected 30” tall, but no luck yet. Now two years old, all that’s left for Eli is hope. Well, his Napoleonic confidence will probably always overcome any obstacle, especially when he has really important horses like Charlie following his every devious directive. Charlie’s eyes don’t equate Eli’s smaller size to be representative of anything significant, but somehow the colt knows that Eli is older. So, young Charlie is often led down the wrong (and narrow) path by the cunning ass, Eli, the elder.

The sun was setting over the neighbor’s barn, distracting me from chores. The sky was streaked with bright pink, paint brush-like strokes, glazed over with orange and yellow layers. Stars already appeared in the dark, navy-blue sky above. A single, thread-like line of pale powder-blue appeared just along the horizon, the last of daylight’s evidence waning. It looked like a thin, celestial Navajo turquoise-bead necklace, in the near, night heavens.

It was a cold evening already, with a hard freeze coming overnight.

I walked into the fenced chicken-yard, rounded up the little mustangs, and escorted them back into the barnyard. Immediately both equine heads were in the hen-feed bucket I’d carelessly left by the yard door. All critters love chicken feed for some reason. The crushed corn, I guess. I shushed the boys away, and shook the bucket so the chickens would hear the grain, while calling them to roost for the night. They weren’t far away, having been hovering near the coop, just waiting for the four-legged bullies to exit their little protected poultry cloister. The chickens followed me, and the bucket, into their yard, to enjoy a snack and then climb the cedar ladder up to their roost to settle in for a cold night. I’d certainly have the heat lamp on for them later, what with the night’s forecast.

The look I was going for in the design of the chicken coop, by the way, was sort of a cross between a Ma and Pa Kettle type casual edifice and a Swiss chalet. It’s a hodge-podge of re-purposed materials, including rusty corrugated tin, spare plywood and scrap cedar boards of varied dimension. The hens seem to approve of their home, eager to turn in after a hard day’s free-ranging. The empty feed bucket becomes the full egg bucket at day’s end.  I move the day-time door-stop (a brick) from the bottom edge of the old wooden screen-door and lock it up with a 2X4 that spans the frame, which secures their tuck-winged world for the night.

I originally took great pains with the construction of the chicken yard. I buried the chicken-wire in a foot-deep trench, and even extended a continuous wire ceiling over the whole top of the yard, not unlike traditional, draping circus-tent systems. An ancient overhanging cedar tree, trimmed of lower limbs up to about eight feet, provided lots of stiff branches as support for the assorted colorful bungee cords I attached in order to suspend the whole the chicken wire canopy. It was a pain to complete, but I was able to smile with relief as I closed the last gap in the free-form chicken-wire cover over the yard.  No night-hunting critters would be able to climb over the wall and into the chicken coop.

The waning evening light was darker, still, beneath the shade of the tall old cedar tree that served as the   center pole to my ersatz chicken-yard circus-tent. Suddenly, a Great-horned Owl swooped right over our heads (mine and the chickens). The handsome, floating raptor glided silently only a few inches above, arrogantly peering  into the wire-canopy enclosure, no doubt with plans of upcoming poultry meals at my expense.

Modern flying drones are meager shape and temperature counters, when compared to the computational and analytical eyes and ears of a winged winter visitor, like the owl.  With all its sensory nerves and muscles and tissue responding to those time-proven sound and sight messages, such an ancient, wise hunter usually finds a way to outsmart even the most protective farmer.     

We are blessed with beautiful owls and hawks on our place, but we like them better without valuable layers in their talons. And of course we don’t let any of the chicks free-range in the daytime until they’ve become much larger and heavier talon-targets.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Guard your chickens.

Picking Potatoes      by Tom Motley

Much of the pleasure of gardening is in the anticipation of things to come. This morning I strew straw (really) around the trunks of our tall Yukon Gold and red potato plants, and now anticipate the second picking of the season in a couple of weeks.  The other evening, Chef George Brown (Experimental Table), kindly brought his triplets over to help me with the first harvest of said potatoes, to be delivered the next morning to our mutual friend, Chef Robert Lyford at Patina Green, on McKinney’s downtown square.  My young garden students made me proud. All three are fast learners when it comes to farm stuff.

The small hands of children are ideal for finding potato-treasure, deep beneath and around the plant’s trunk. I know, having helped my Granddad Motley plant seed-potatoes every Valentine’s Day, and dig for mature spuds in May and June with Grandma.  Today, our potatoes are planted in raised beds.  With rich compost and soil layers over years of progress, the eager little hands of the Brown siblings easily delved the organic depths, shortly discovering and picking nearly ten pounds of gorgeous yellow and red potatoes.  I enjoyed every moment, as each child would occasionally call out, “Tom, this one’s about the size of an egg/golf ball/big rock, should I take it?” Who am I to disappoint such happy workers? Pretty much every potato, small, medium and tiny, got piled into the bucket, with my total approval.

One of the important lessons my child-labor force learned about potatoes is to always respect and  protect the Mother plant (not a bad lesson for children to think about, right?).  The Brown kids learned that after finding treasure (which always involves jostling the Mother about a bit) you don’t just take the bounty and leave open excavation everywhere! Those holes need to be refilled, and the Mother plant’s trunk needs reinforcement. Becca and I keep straw bales near the potato plants for this very purpose. After any harvesting, straw, leaves, or dirt should be added several inches high around the exposed potato plant’s trunk, in order to support the base, insuring continued growth and production.

While picking the new potatoes, discussion with the triplets turned to upcoming preparation in the kitchen. Basically, the eager and curious palates of the children prompted a dialog about potato recipes.  With famous chefs for parents, these kids naturally pay attention to what they eat, how things taste, and how things are prepared.  So I told them about my favorite ways to cook the very potatoes we were picking.

Young red potatoes are ideal for ultimate mashing.  They almost become liquid. Grandma always called her mashed potatoes “creamed potatoes.”  Indeed they were like cream if you didn’t know better. The red potato’s natural softness makes it an easy boiler and rapid roaster. The roasted skin of a red potato brushed in olive oil is a favorite early summer garden treat for me.

My sons always loved my homemade potato chips made with Yukon Golds. The smaller diameter of the yellow gem makes for almost silver-dollar sized chips. Parental tip: potato chips made at home are special. The kids get to see the process, experience the fresh, hot aroma, and eat them warm. The pleasure of the chip is directly related to the labor of preparation and cooking. Chemically-infused retail chips in bags lose their crunchy attraction for children if the kids get a ration of the homemade version on occasion.

We’re growing only Yukon Gold and red potatoes this year, but normally grow Kinnebeck as well, which also thrives in North Texas. I’ve never had a great crop of fingerling varieties, at my farms in Hunt County or Collin.

Growing up in Texas, I was accustomed to endless rows of cotton mostly, then corn, then the infernal Johnson grass that invaded every inch of bare dirt in this part of the country. Texas adolescents and teens spent most of their time in summer not at leisure camps or swimming pools, but attacking Johnson grass stalks one at a time, each youngster armed with a single, sharpened hoe.

My first view of a genuine North Dakota potato field took my breath away. A couple of other young airmen and I had ventured off the base at Grand Forks in an old, borrowed car. We wanted to tour the countryside. We stopped the car under a rare shade-tree.  It took several minutes for a Texas boy to realize what he was seeing.  Row after row of potato plants stretched in all directions, to the horizon and beyond. No mountains, no hills, no buildings, fences or telephone poles broke the vastness of that one crop’s landscape. The vividness of the sea of countless green leaves was even more striking as they gently swayed against the backdrop of a crystal-clear, cloudless blue sky.

In the Hill County of my childhood, everybody grew potatoes for the family in their own humble gardens. The potatoes were a staple of farm meals, stored in root cellars, and canned for use on future, frigid winter days. It simply astounded me to realize that northern prairie folks actually made a living out of growing potatoes, to be sold in cities far away. I felt naïve, and I was.

The Problem with Basil                           by Tom Motley

The night before last, the thermometer in our gardens fell to 25 degrees, in the very wee hours of Wednesday morning. That is cold, for mid-November, in Collin County. As the Tuesday afternoon temps dipped, my friend John and I were at the kitchen table, having a business meeting we had planned for some time. During our meeting, Joan of Arc (aka, wife Becca), bravely labored outside, covering the fall herbs and produce with yards and yards of frost-cloth, aka ‘row-cover.’

After any early deep-freeze event, most of the garden items come through like gang-busters, if covered properly (see Tom Motley North Texas Gardens archive articles). We’d wisely harvested all the remaining  heirloom, striped-eggplant, fall cherry tomatoes, and the last of the serrano, habanero and cherry peppers the evening before, in anticipation of the cold that was coming. A good thing, too, as all those delicious items are done, for now. (This time of year, for rural folks, trusting the John Deere Ag -Weather forecast to be correct is better than doubting same).

We will employ frequent night-time frost-cloth coverings during the coming months of cold temps. French Nantes carrots, radishes, Detroit Red beets, garlic chives, French Rocket  and Italian Wild arugulas, lettuce varieties, spinach, cabbages, rainbow chard, and all the splendidly hardy herbs, of course, will sustain us through most of our North Texas winter.

I had already been in the gardens Tuesday morning by 5:00, cutting items for a restaurant order. While I was harvesting wild Italian arugula, pineapple sage, rainbow chard and pak-choi cabbage (in the dark), 2 other chefs had texted me with new orders, by 6:00 A.M.! Mostly, they each wanted lots of our various basils, including Purple Ruffle, Red Rubin, African Blue, Genovese, and Purple Thai. These chefs had also heard the chilling weather forecast, and knew that  their local basil source was about to be finis. I had to smile.

I’ve been educating farmers’ market customers and conscientious chefs for many years, regarding the realities of using local, seasonal, organic products. In particular, pretty much every good cook in North Texas gets somewhat complacent about the availability of tasty basil throughout the spring and summer, day in, day out, at our many Farmers Markets in Dallas, Collin, and Tarrant counties. (For example, I never showed up at any of the four area Farmers Markets I vended for years with less than six different varieties of basil). 

In the midst of bounty, humans have short memories. We prater away in the kitchen, for months on end, from spring to winter, blithely preparing tons of delicious pizza, bruschetta, garden salads, garnishes and the like, all with the freshest variety of purple, red, green, variegated, sweet, herbal basils, straight out of nearby garden beds. For most of a year, the sumptuous abundance of basil practically spills over into the very kitchen itself, requiring little or no effort on our part but to reach out and pluck a heavenly aromatic handful of the stuff. Our lazy brains are lulled into forgetting that basil cannot always be with us.

The problem with basil (understand, it is only a problem for cooks who forget this lesson) is that it dies when local temps hit 40 degrees. This occurs whether or not the plant is under frost-cloth. Of course, I’m talking about basil grown in true raised beds or in-ground, authentic terroir gardens, not the stuff manufactured inside gigantic metal and glass terrariums with Terry Gilliam-looking mad arrays of pipes and pumps for delivery of artificial fertilizer and anti-fungal juices. Real basil, in real dirt, dies at forty degrees.

So I was delighted to harvest a bunch of basil for local chefs who know that good things, garden-wise, don’t last forever. Well, they don’t last all year, for sure. However, customers at farmers’ markets have assured me for years how they are able to successfully freeze my basil leaves in ice-cube trays and freezer bags and the like, thereby enjoying “fresh” basil throughout the winter. 

All of that seems very fussy to us. Somehow, a leaf of thawed basil popped out of an ice-cube tray just isn’t essential. We do recommend to our customers, though, that freezing homemade pesto and other herbal sauces with the last of the fall basil, in dinner-size portions, is useful practice. That’s what we do. ‘Joan of Arc,’ herself, is a pesto nut, and even I, myself, will tolerate it agreeably atop buttery pasta on some frigid February nights. 

Farming and gardening families learn to let go of greens and produce when those plants seasonally leave us. When our tomatoes are gone, and our favorite farmers’ market growers’ tomatoes are gone, we just have salads without tomatoes for a few winter months. Before long, for example, picking baby Brussels sprouts off of tall stalks that thrive especially under snow-cover, we’ll be reminded again that the earth provides special, delicious tastes all year long, each in its own, unique season of bounty.

Fried Chicken: To Be (battered) or Not to Be (battered)?    By Tom Motley

Shakespeare may not have eaten any real fried chicken. He ate fried fish and chips, most likely. Indeed, the player Shallow’s menu-choice in King Henry the Fourth seems to come closest to the bard ever suggesting joy of eating bird, in writing:

A' shall answer it. Some pigeons, Davy, a couple of short-legged hens, a joint of mutton, and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell William cook.

Like Shallow, I love fried dove-breast too, but I am sure Will Shakespeare missed out on fried chicken, Texas style. Sadly, Will Motley missed out on that great pleasure too, at the hands of my kitchen-challenged Grandmother. Grandma was an expert with horses and the Bible, but not cooking.

What do I love about fried chicken? The first thing that stirs turn-of-the century (the last century) familial-prairie-memory is, of course, the vibrant aroma wafting off a hot skillet of the stuff; next comes the crunch, on top of tender texture, moisture, and simply an immense feeling of comfort, of security. It’s not the slam of turkey’s tryptophan that makes you want a nap after a family-shared meal of fried chicken, it’s just a sensation called contentment.

In Dallas, culinary rediscovery of the historic charms of fried chicken seems to occur every ten years or so. Like golden-puffed fried chicken rising in a vat of hot oil, our revived cultural protein-longing rises to the surface of our regional social consciousness, provoked by the sensory memory of smell, taste and feel of good times. The lusty, tactile experience prompts in us a remembered manifestation, a tangible bit of evidence of the ritualistic elements of family and community ceremonies: Sunday dinner, reunions, post-funeral gatherings, picnics, church socials, or neighborhood cookouts.

Even a solo meal of a couple of pieces of fried chicken, for a Texan far away from home, or a recent love-dumpee, divorcee, or one-in-mourning,  fried chicken delivers a comforting touchstone.

Naylor's Drumstick (site of current day's Norma's) faithfully served up hot platters of fried chicken fulfillment for decades of Oak Cliff families on Davis Street. The Yellow Cab Company had its Oak Cliff terminal right across the street. My dad drove his cab out of that lot.

Tracing the history of small, family-owned fried chicken joints in Dallas (before the year 2000) is a daunting task. Historical information about cultural ideals (like fried chicken) ultimately becomes mostly apocryphal anyway. Small neighborhood cafes and convenience stores kept customers coming back for the crispy treasures for years in the same spots, much like popular snow-cone stands that stood next-door. However, originally single-site, neighborhood Henderson’s and Williams’ Chicken, for example, are both in multiple commercial locations today, throughout North Central and East Texas.

When I had a studio on Harwood St. in downtown Dallas, a favorite haunt of mine was the ancient Henderson's Chicken on Thomas Ave. (or State St., I forget) near the old cemetery south of the current MAC galleries on McKinney. There was a very hip old blues & jazz record store across the street. I used to take my best painting students there to shop for music, and then over to Henderson’s to get lunch-to-go for their field trips to my studio. The narrow, long place featured a mounted counter-top for diners, with a few stools, along one wall, and the serving counter just in front of the deep stainless-steel fryers.  Fries were placed on the bottom of a paper boat, two wedges of Texas toast next, two pieces of fried chicken on top with a large, pickled jalapeno thrown in for good measure. Students loved it all.

When I was stationed at Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota, my friend Staff Sgt. Kay Crockett, from Tupelo, Miss. made chicken like his Momma taught him: cut up the chicken, wash the chicken thoroughly, pat dry lightly, salt and pepper (not too much). Kay rolled the pieces in flour, but I prefer to shake the chicken in flour inside a paper bag. This is my standard method today. I like it that the chicken pieces retain some of the water-wash which not only attaches to the flour nicely, but provides serious crackle in the hot oil and great finished crust.

Last Sunday, for my cool step-son, Luke, and his friend Trey (both skateboard virtuosos and fried chicken fans), I added panko to the flour coating. This awesome Japanese bread-crumb makes the chicken as Uber-crispy as coconut shrimp. I fried the floured chicken in a mixture of vegetable and peanut oil. Becca made Yukon Gold mashed potatoes and a huge, fresh salad, all organic, all from our garden. With her traditional, hand-made, Rice-Krispy treats for dessert, all was well with the world at the Motley house.

Buttermilk also makes a tasty companion to chicken, as batter-loving regulars at Sissy's Southern Kitchen & Bar on Henderson in Dallas will attest. Here in McKinney, we go to Rick’s Chophouse on the Square whenever a nostalgic, true, pan-fried-chicken fix is necessary. Executive Chef Andrea Shackelford recently explained their three day, labor-intensive process of brining, repeated buttermilk baths and consecutive flour coatings, days before the bird ever hits the pan.

On the other hand, my Grandma Motley's own battered, fried chicken was soft and mushy like KFC. She steamed the awful mess for much of the cooking process, I guess, to make sure the bird died thoroughly. I ate Grandma’s chicken only out of respect for the woman. She was, though, much more adventurous with fried potatoes, which were overcooked or burnt on the outside and raw in the middle. I think Grandma liked growing things a lot more than cooking them. Grandma’s gardens were prolific. She may have been the original raw food advocate, possibly regarding cooking vegetables as a vain human gesture.

My sweet Aunt Maureen raised (and fried) bantam chickens, the cooked pieces a perfect size for kids’ little fingers.  Cousin Douglas and I would spend mornings doing chores for my aunt, with lots of playtime between jobs. We returned around noon to her little white, clapboard-sided house (across the street from the Irene Methodist Church) with shopping-list items from Uncle Walt’s store and the day’s mail from the post office downtown.

During our morning absence, Aunt Maureen would have plucked, sectioned, floured and fried a little bantam hen, straight out of the yard; no refrigeration required.  With used Hawaiian Punch cans for iced tea glasses, Doug and I felt like child-kings. We were certainly spoiled little boys, enjoying a unique and delicious fried chicken dinner, from yard to skillet to table.

Mild Winter Weather by Tom Motley

The wind blew so hard the other night in Collin County that, while we slept, my hard-to find rain-proof cover for the outdoor box rib-smoker was completely ripped off all its Velcro tethers. Who knows how far the thing traveled during that night-long wind-storm.  It reminded me of the constant gales and blows up at my old Merit farm. The wind blew all day, every day up there. Farmers in that part of Hunt County are accustomed to the local phenomena that if your hat blows away, wait a few minutes and some other farmer’s hat will blow into your hands. (The correct heads and hats are reunited at the annual community Holiday Hat Exchange).

Early February this year was downright civil here in Collin County, garden-wise. This, despite the fact that we probably kept the beds covered more nights (and days) in late December and the first three weeks of January more than any winter in the last seven or eight years.

We have been farming and gardening long enough, however, to not be lulled into an illusory la-la land of sustainable faith in balminess right on through springtime. In other words, we keep the freeze-cloth close by at all times, even when local WFAA Weather and the almost always reliable John Deere Ag Weather sites promise, say, ten days in a row of kind climes in North Texas.

Mother Nature in February and early March can slam the door on kindness faster than Carrie’s tough-love Mom can lock the troubled teen in her frosty time-out closet.

In March, She might dump a ton of sleet and freezing rain on our pretty gardens, followed by a tornado to heist our organic, raised beds and airlift the whole works to somebody else’s property in another county. There’s just no telling.

But today was a glorious day in the garden. This morning, Becca harvested lush Asian collard greens, crispy Chinese cabbage, red and curly leaf kale, Italian ‘wild’ arugula, winter cilantro, Greek oregano, beautiful broccoli flowerets and leaves (with bright yellow, edible flowers), and fragrant chocolate mint. 

Before leaving for her usual volunteer shift at nearby Children’s and Community Health Center,  Becca had kindly made everything ready for me when I got home from classes this afternoon. So all I had to do was deliver the herbs and produce to Chef Craig Brundege (Square Burger) and Chef Robert Lyford (Patina Green) in downtown McKinney, and enjoy brief visits with each.

I planted Yukon Gold potatoes this year on Valentine’s Day, more out of nostalgia than anything, because that’s when Granddad Motley planted seed potatoes in Hill County. With global warming (why do I always think ‘global warning’?), I probably could have planted a month ago and would have still been okay; after all, now that North Texas has been officially declared a Zone 8 region instead of Zone 7. we’ve all had to adjust our planting schemes, including choice of dates and produce.

My neighbor, Tyler, tells me that he’s planting banana trees and pineapples this year because of the dramatic zoning change. More power to him. I rented the old movie The Hawaiians for Tyler so he could organize a raid on French Guiana pineapple plantations, as did Charlton Heston, to obtain heirloom stock.