Wildcard Wednesday: The Country North of Belleville

There are a lot of stones on our farm. It feels like all we've done this Spring is pick rocks, roll boulders, grunt and sweat, trying to move stones. Ugh. It's enough to make someone more ambitious than us write a poem. Lucky for us, Al Purdy (our FAVOURITE poet) at Hill Giant Farm, wrote one for us. So, for this weeks wildcard Wednesday, we hope you will enjoy The Country North of Belleville.


Bush land scrub land-
Cashel Township and Wollaston
Elzevir McClure and Dungannon
green lands of Weslemkoon Lake
where a man might have some
      opinion of what beauty
is and none deny him
                           for miles-

Yet this is the country of defeat
where Sisyphus rolls a big stone
year after year up the ancient hills
picnicking glaciers have left strewn
with centuries rubble
                          backbreaking days
                          in sun and rain
when realization seeps slow in the mind
without grandeur or self-deception in
                          noble struggle
of being a fool-

A country of quiescence and still distance
a lean land
               not like the fat south
with inches of black soil on
               earth's round belly-
And where the farms are
               it's as if a man stuck
both thumbs in the stony earth and pulled

                               it apart
                              to make room
enough between the trees
for a wife
              and maybe some cows and
             room for some
of the more easily kept illusions-
And where farms have gone back
to forest
              are only soft outlines
              shadowy differences-
Old fences drift vaguely among the trees
              a pile of moss-covered stones
gathered for some ghost purpose
has lost meaning under the meaningless sky
               - they are like cities under water
and the undulating green waves of time
are laid on them-

This is the country of our defeat
         and yet
during the fall plowing a man
might stop and stand in a brown valley of furrows
          and shade his eyes to watch for the same
          red patch mixed with gold
          that appears on the same
          spot in the hills
           year after year
          and grow old
plowing and plowing a ten-acre field until
the convolutions run parallel with his own brain-

And this is a country where the young
                   leave quickly
unwilling to know what their fathers know
or think the words their mothers do not say-

Herschel Monteagle and Faraday
lakeland rockland and hill country
a little adjacent to where the world is
a little north of where the cities are and
sometime
we may go back there
                                  to the country of our defeat
Wollaston Elzevir and Dungannon
and Weslemkoon lake land
where the high townships of Cashel
                                   McClure and Marmora once were-
But it's been a long time since
and we must enquire the way
of strangers-

Mmmm Monday: Chickpea Masala

Over the last couple of weeks the pace of life has really picked up at the farm. You may have noticed, as our blog posts have dropped as a result of the hectic pace. But, we haven't forgotten about our blog- and we're still making and eating delicious, nutritious and easy food at Hill Giant Farm. Because R is vegetarian, M has picked up some pretty tasty vegetarian meal/side dish ideas over the years. One of our favourites is Chickpea Masala. Masala is a common vegetarian dish in Indian cuisine and can be made as spicy or as mild as desired. You'll find our recipe, and some ideas on how to make it more or less spicy, below.

Chickpea Masala

3 Tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped
6 cloves of garlic, pressed/minced
2 Tbsp ginger (fresh would be tasty, but dry will do just fine too)
2 tsp each coriander, cumin and garam masala (garam masala can be bought in most grocery stores and Clubhouse makes a lovely version for a reasonable price)
2 tsp chili powder (if you want it spicy, if not, skip it)
1/2 cup tomato paste (or 1 small can of pizza sauce and 3 Tbsp of flour)
2 tsp packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 cans (19 oz/540 ml each) of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 Tbsp lemon juice

1. In a saucepan, heat oil over medium-heat high heat cook onions and garlic stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes.
2. Add ginger, coriander, cumin, and garam masala (chilli powder too if using it). Cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. The smell is absolutely delicious and will stay in the house for the evening!
3. Stir in 1 cup of water, tomato paste, brown sugar, salt and chickpeas. Scrape up any brown bits and put them back in the pot. Reduce the heat and simmer until it has thickened slightly, about 15 minutes. Stir in lemon juice.


The total prep time is approx. 30 minutes. When you serve it, add a dollop of plain yogurt to the centre of the bowl. This will enhance the fragrant flavour and will cool the spice nicely. It's really a delicious dish. We hope you try it and love it. Let us know!

New Arrivals

Spring is such a wonderful season. There is so much new life everywhere. This week, we had 72 newcomers arrive at Hill Giant Farm. 51 of them were Rhode Island Red chicks, and 21 of them were Peking ducklings. They're awfully cute, and very noisy. Both the chicks and the ducklings are living in storage buckets in the grainery of the barn under heat lamps. This morning when we came out, there were a number of chicks that had smothered one another in the corner. Unfortunately,  some of them died. The others were put in a bin of their own with the heat lamp, and they have made a full recovery. As a last ditch attempt to help them warm up, R put them in "intensive care", which amounted to using the blow dryer in the house to warm them up and dry them off.

Below are some photos of the chicks and ducklings. We hope you enjoy them. If you live nearby, feel free to pop in and visit.

R holding one of the chicks. At this point, gender cannot easily be determined. It won't be until they get their adult feathers that it will be clear who are hens and roosters.

Our friend C doing his best to keep this squirmy little guy from  getting away.

There's nothing like standing on your food to kick start the day. 

This photo of M with both a duckling and a chick highlights the difference in size between the two birds.

 Tomorrow the ducklings will begin their supervised swimming. We'll try and add some photos of that too. Enjoy your day!