The Little Red Hen

Tumbledown is hungry.

Abby McGanney Nolan's review of illustrator Jerry Pinckney's The Little Red Hen reminded Tumbledown this week of all the good things there are to eat down on the farm. The heat of summer is a fading memory; the sweat of scything and bundling sheaves is giving way to long sleeves;

and the aching muscles that once threshed winnowed now rest mostly when they are not shivering.

(See Gene Logsdon's Small Scale Grain Raising for a detailed description of this method of harvesting home-grown garden wheat.)

But there is now wheat to grind and bake for Thanksgiving. There are whole-wheat pancakes to make and smother with butter, and raspberry jam to spread. And Tumbledown has to wonder whether the youngsters will help with the feast, other than with the eating.

But what shall we make? There are so many possibilities. And some are not even that much work. What about No-Knead Bread? Or Kolaches? Or thumbprint cookies?

mmmm! Now there's a lesson that cannot be taught more directly than on the old-time diversified farm. "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat!" (2 Thessalonians 3:10)

Tumbledown Farm

Animal Farm

Tumbledown would be remiss if he failed to mention the 61st anniversary of George Orwell's classic farming handbook, first published after a year and a half delay (to satisfy the publisher, and perhaps also some British censors, that Russia would not be unduly offended) in August 1945. It should be some small comfort that the satire is still required reading in the U.S., along with Nineteen Eighty-Four, in many High School and college literature classes. Mostly, with the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, we've exorcised our "communist" demons. But totalitarianism of all sorts is still with us, especially the sort that says "if you are not with us, you are against us" (in the words of The Seven Commandments, "whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy"; "whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend"). In other words, the sort of totalitarianism that gives rise to animal revolutions in the first place is still all too much with us. After all, Eric Blair begins his classic "fairy tale" with Mr. Jones and his last glass of beer, not with the comrade pigs.

Tumbledown thinks we still have a few things to learn from Mr. Orwell's farm--and not just to use a lantern, shut the popholes on the hen-houses, and mow and rake with Boxer and Clover. Some animals are still "more equal than others." Too many farms are still Manor Farm and too many farmers still rulers less-than-entirely great.

Haven't read it in a while? Check out Animal Farm,The 50th Anniversary Edition. And while you are at it, listen to NPR's Day to Day, with Alex Chadwick's tribute to the book, August 17, 2005.