An update on Loue chicken’s 50th anniversary.  All that good stuff they get fed has joined the list of ever-more-expensive food.  The price of grain has risen faster than little green sprouts.  Result?  Those yummy free-range birds have become rara avis on shopping lists thanks to new, higher prices just announced.  Not really the way consumers had planned on celebrating the anniversary. 

But it’s an ill-will and all that….  Higher fuel prices have driven many French shoppers home giving small shop keepers something to celebrate.  Instead of getting in their cars and heading to les grands surfaces or supermarkets on the edge of town, people are walking or biking downtown for their daily baguette and other supplies.   Small towns all over France are rejoicing.

Me, too.

It’s official:  No “chlorinated” chickens will be allowed into any of the countries of the European Union.  Translation:  Chickens from the United States washed in a chlorine solution are now banned.

“But, hey,” protests the U.S., “this is the best way to kill bacteria on the chickens once they’ve been slaughtered.  You can always wash the bleach off.”

We’ve got a better idea, the E.U. responded.  Raise your chickens in healthy, hygenic conditions.  That will take care of the bacteria problem–without the bleach.

Word of the E.U. decision arrived here just as one of France’s most famous chicken-growing cooperatives was celebrating its 50th anniversary–the Loue chickens. For 50 years these birds have been raised in perfectly organic conditions.   Several hundred thousand of them reach the market annually, although foxes in the Loue neighborhood in northwestern France are chubby.  They manage to grab nearly a quarter million of the favored fowl each year despite farmers’ best attempts to round their birds up each night and close them in.

The chickens’ days, however, are idyllic, roaming around the myriad of farms in the Loue area that supply the co-operative.  In addition to whatever nice, juicy worms they find, the chickens get the purest grain possible.  No commercially-manufactured or genetically modified feed is allowed.

Loue birds get the added benefit of a very long life–three months longer than other chickens destined for the human food chain.  And, as French gourmets know, the flesh of these pampered volaille is both tender and succulent.

So, happy birthday Loue.  And many more.

Quiet and calm–two words nearly everybody uses when they ask about country life.  Ha!  New people moved into our village and promptly became city hall regulars complaining about noise.  It seems there was lots of mowing, plowing, hedge-trimming and kids-playing going on.  Even big tactors pulling wagons of mooing cows.  Our mayor, a life-long farmer, was surprised.  It never occured to him that the place was noisy, but dutifully he suggested to the coterie of little boys that they might not yell so much. 

Another mayor also got complaints about noise.  This savvy fellow decided to complain himself and called in the local press. He’d had it with the weekenders who came out from the cities and didn’t understand the countryside.  “Plowing and hauling, that’s what we do,” he said.  “Do they think their food is made in some cotton-lined warehouse?”

You may also remember Pedro, the donkey hauled into court for braying too loudly.  This week he got company–Coco the cock.  He crowed at night keeping a neighbor awake and furious.  The sleepless one resorted to sleeping pills which “ruined her health,” she said.  So, she too, took an animal–and its owner–to court.  The judge forced the owner to pay damages or kill the cock. 

“It’s not my fault,” said Coco’s owner.  “It’s those electric lights.  People shouldn’t use them.  They confuse poor Coco.” 

If they ever make a cow version of “Sex and the City,” the four bovines who came to spend a  season in our orchard will be the stars.  These four girls, all purebred Norman cows, were black and white beauties.

And they were all out for a good time while they waited for the next step in their lives–motherhood and work.

There was no question who the “alpha” cow was–number 21, our own Sarah Jessica Parker.  She was the leader of the pack and wherever she went numbers 19, 20 and 22 followed.  19 and 20 were twins who naturally stuck together and trotted after 21. 22, however, was a freer spirit.  You always had the sensation that she would go her own way if something more interesting came along.  She didn’t follow because she was a follower; she followed when–and if–she wanted to.

21 was a tease.  If we bent over to weed, she would buzz us, running right up beside us at full speed.  Then, I swear, you could almost hear a quartet of cow laughter as we jumped aside.  21 all but said, “Gotcha.”

22 hung back a bit from these cattle jokes, seemingly as amused by her pasture-mates as by human behavior.  

At no time was 22’s diffidence more apparent than when the four of them were returned to the Mercier farm to meet their destiny–artificial insemination.  Again 21 was the leader; she became pregnant instantly.  19 and 20 dutifully followed suit.

Not so 22.  She did not like the whole procedure.  She began to lose her hair and began avoiding the other girls.  The Merciers tried again, but had no better luck.  “I think she wants a bull,” Monsieur Mercier told us. 

It was a few months later that we found out M. Mercier was right.  After a lovely “honeymoon” in clover and other grasses with handsome fellow, 22 was “with calf.”  Once again her hair was lustrous and she had her whimsical style back.  

There was also a slyly superior look about her.   The other girls had settled for the first excitement that had come their way.  She had found Mr. Big.