In our second episode, James shows you how to make Chicken with Cherry Tomatoes & Ginger!

In our first episode, James cooks a simple and delicious Salmon Fillets & Mango dish.  Also, learn the secret to cooking perfect salmon, every time!

It was all so easy. In my mind. Plough the back five acres, put in some fence posts. An electric fence they said. Then get a couple pigs. They’ll dig it up. And manure it. “Then you’ll be ready for cows.” It was the cows I really wanted. Ever since last years Calgary Stampede I’d had pictures of them in my wallet. Waist high cows, Irish cows, called Dexters. I fell in love with them and I couldn’t wait to lean on the gate, with a straw in my mouth, looking at the cows. My cows. Everybody else in the valley had cows, big black and white ones and big brown Jerseys, walking about in the fields, mooing. And I’d be the guy with the little cows. Walking about in my field, mooing. Pretty cows, with pretty names, like Christina, and Shelley, and Buffy, and when I called they’d come over, all big eyed, and moo. Little cows, little moos.

I moved in just before Christmas. Very cold. Walked down to the creek the first morning, stood on the bridge (just a little bridge) and watched the water. There seemed to be a lot more of it than last summer, when I first started dreaming of my farm. It was higher and faster and noisier, and then the bridge broke away from the bank. I fell in. It was cold water, and the house was even colder the heaters didn’t seem to work, the taps ran cold, and there were no lights. It seems to be a feature of country living that the electricity fails. If you fall in the water it fails immediately, otherwise once a week. And on Christmas Day, I spent the day in bed.

Next morning was no warmer, still no electricity, so I walked over to the neighbor. Hello, come in, you look cold, want coffee? Splash of rum in it? We’re just having breakfast, like bacon? More rum? By lunchtime I’d discovered that it was too cold and the ground too hard to plough, that pigs were stubborn and difficult, that sheep were stupid, cows didn’t respect electric fences, that there wasn’t any money in farming, nobody could expect to make a go of 12 acres unless they had a rich wife and a day job . By evening, I knew that hawks ate the chickens, rabbits ate all the vegetables, deer ate all the flowers, that the bridge (my bridge) broke away every winter, that the only way to keep warm in my house was to wear ski clothes over woolen underwear. Getting the lights back on was complicated in my house because the previous owner had strange ideas about electricians secretly complicating the nature of electricity so that ordinary people wouldn’t understand it and would therefore have to hire an electrician even to change a light bulb. So he did all his own wiring, using old telephone wire, and the main switch for the house was out in the barn and after a power failure it needed someone to be out there and shout to someone in the house about exactly when to switch on the circuit breakers or none of this worked. “And if I were you I’d get the whole place rewired, before it burns down.” We drank quite a lot more rum (it was Sunday all that day) and decided that my tractor wasn’t big enough (apparently one of the main problems with farming is the size of tractor, always too small or too large), and the solution is a newspaper called Buy and Sell which comes out every Tuesday and is filled with advertisement for tractors, (big tractor owners seeking smaller ones, smaller ones looking for bigger).

Then we got on to fence posts, which are wood or metal or fiberglass (wood rots, metal rusts, fiberglass is useless), taxes (much too high), barn roofs (“yours looks like it needs replacing pretty soon”). We also touched on fishermen collecting Unemployment Insurance, Ministers of Agriculture (“don’t know an apple from an onion”) Revenue Canada (” think I’m making a fortune”), and, as the bottle was now empty, the high cost of rum.

It’s now a year later. I’ve got some fence posts in (not electric), a new bridge, the same tractor, new wiring (the roof can wait) and I know quite a lot of the neighbours. We all agree that the price of rum is too high, that everything else is too big or too small, that farming is a ridiculous occupation, and finally that there’s nothing else we’d rather do. And I still have the pictures of the Dexters in my wallet.

James Barber

Its seven minutes into town. There’s always somebody hitching, just enough time for a comfortable exchange – where you going, the weather, did you get your garlic planted, nice meeting you, thanks for the ride and see you again.” Usually country conversations are easy but this was a craggy faced old guy in a muff.

“Going to the market?” Most people are on Saturdays, buy some Brussel sprouts, or an apple pie from Michelle. He said he was going to his piano lesson but no hurry, not until eleven. So we stopped at Black Coffee which is gossip central for the Cowichan Valley – there’s good coffee, pretty girls and something about it that makes people talk. He used to fish salmon, “…just a gill-netter. Come home at night. Sleep in your own bed.”

He was eighty six. “Not many people taking piano lessons at eight six?” And no, there weren’t. But he was doing it to please his wife. They’d had the piano for nearly forty years….”it just sat there and neither of us could play it, it came from her aunt’s house and nobody else wanted it. But it looked nice in the living room. She liked piano music and she always wanted me to play. So I started lessons. About four years ago. Every Saturday. Then I practice all week. Wish I’d started earlier.”

“What kind of music do you play?” “She likes the old stuff. Sing alongs. A bit romantic. Nothing fancy. She’s old fashioned. Like this muff, it came with the piano and it really works. She showed me .Keeps your hands warm. The house is a bit cold. Used six cords of wood last winter to keep the stove going all night. She likes it warm.”

We had another coffee. Black Coffee’s that sort of place. “You have kids?”

“Never did. Just the two of us. Not even a dog. Sixty years next year. It’s a long time to be married. I built the house and we never moved. Get used to a place, and the people…we’re not big for change.”

“But the piano must make a big difference. If you play a lot.”

“I do. Every evening. I think she likes it.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Well, she died six years ago. I just want to keep her happy.”

He’s coming to supper next week. I wonder…do I cook for two? Or three?

James Barber

The cat didn’t do anything. Just looked at them. “City cat,”, said the neighbours, “mother never taught it.” We got more mice, more leaking bags. One enterprising mother built a nest in my go to town boots. Shredded paper, rice, and some wool nibbled out of my fancy arctic socks. Another did the same thing in the fax machine. Nice little nests. For mice. “Get some traps”, said the neighbours, “Cheese is good bait.”

They sell mousetraps by the dozen in the local store. Mousetraps are not funny, except in the comic strips. You need Band-Aids. One night, I loaded the whole dozen, under the sink, in the closets, behind the sofa and in the pantry. Cheese isn’t easy to put on spikes, and the traps are trigger-happy – they even go off while you’re placing them. More band-Aids.

Before bed, we all watched the news together – me, the cat, and the mice. The cat is very fond of the bed. She snugs up to my feet and purrs, gets up in the night for a snack (with the mice), then back to bed. I’d forgotten that she (being a City cat) likes cheese. I’d used Gorgonzola, nice and smelly, easy to find. She set off three traps, and got her paw stuck in the last one. Cats with paws in mousetraps are neither reasonable nor cooperative. More Band-Aids.

Neighbours recommended peanut butter, and putting cat out at night. So she can learn about life. She howls at the window. Very sad, very plaintive. The country Vet suggests cat door, “She can come and go as she pleases.” City cat liked it but so did the neighbours’ big ginger cat who came in and ate my cat’s food. 3 a.m. cat fights are worse than mousetraps. Vet suggests a special cat door, with electronics – a little transmitter on the collar opens the flap like her own front door key. Very nice. $150. It needs a carpenter to install it. $75.

Life settles down. Mice don’t seem to like peanut butter. Dried fruit is better. Cat comes and goes, on bed, off bed, on and off. All night. Discovering life. “She finds some wild things, she’ll start catching mice.” say the neighbours. Well, she found some wild things. Baby rabbits. Very proud, “See what I’ve caught, see them run about, see me chase them!” She brings them through the cat door, holds them by the scruff of the neck like a mother cat and her kittens, and then goes out to find some more. She catches them, and she licks them. I put them out. “Bad cat!” She brings more in, and now hides them so I can’t put them out. Most people in the country have mice. We used to have mice, now we have rabbits.

James Barber

Spring 2005

Living in the country means looking at life from a different point of view. When I lived in the city I read three newspapers every day, four on weekends, and I couldn’t go to bed before the late late news on the television. Nowadays I pick up a paper on my weekly visit to the coffee shop… Most times it’s two or three days old. Sometimes more. Doesn’t matter. The politicians will continue to do what they always do, the economy will go up or down, the weather forecasts, seen in retrospect, will be as wrong as usual, Donald Trump will marry Paris and then leave her to move in with Michael Jackson, green vegetables will be found to be very bad for you and the tobacco firms will discover that two year olds who smoke could live to be a hundred… Same old same old.

But there’s one newspaper no self-respecting farmer could do without. Tuesday mornings at 7 a.m. 300 copies of Buy and Sell arrive at the gas station. An hour later they’re all sold. You may not immediately need a 1931 Massey Harris tractor or a pair of Sicilian donkeys, a hydraulic winch, a manual posthole digger, a pregnant pig or 20 bales of weathered hay, but you might want a floral patterned English bone china chamber pot, “very little used”, or (this weeks favourite) “a pair of young gerbils, trained, healthy and friendly, complete with pink harnesses and leashes, $25 OBO. “. The local topsoil supplier suggests a yard of chicken manure as a desirable present for Mother’s Day, and a wedding dress (” never used, still in box, pink, size 20″) is offered at the same phone number as an exercise machine, (” used twice, as seen on TV”).

I seem to buy my share of these things. The wooden rowboat (“needs paint and some repairs, only $50″), still sits in front of the house still needing paint and repairs, and still, two years later, without the load of topsoil in it that would grow the petunias that would flower so beautifully all summer. The potter’s wheel (” needs TLC)” hasn’t moved from where it was unloaded last year in the barn, along with the paint sprayer (“needs cleaning, good for fences, was working, husband died “)

But country life is a lot more than buying and selling stuff. The rabbits are eating my lettuce, the deer are eating my grape vines, the mink are eating the chickens and the bears are waiting to eat the corn. The barn swallows are waiting for the exact moment to push their babies out of the nesting box – too early and they can’t fly, too late and for some reason they won’t, meaning, in both cases that they fall to the ground and make quick snacks for cats. The hawks, in their turn, circle in the sky, waiting for rabbits, or cats, or small Shi Tzu dogs, and I wander the kitchen garden, looking to pull up the right lettuce. Country life is all about eating.

And sleeping. The sun rises just before 6 a.m. So do the roosters and the donkeys and the cats and the dogs. And me. Two hours on the tractor before breakfast, three hours before lunch, four hours weeding before supper, feed the animals, talk to the pigs, and suddenly it’s late. 8.30. Bedtime. Because tomorrow morning the sun rises just before six. And so it goes. Life is different in the country.

I have a new kitten. Mostly Himalayan, 2 ½ pounds, white with violet ears, sharp teeth, a climber — legs, curtains, bedposts and trees. My other cat, once a 2 lb kitten too, is now a 15 lb black rabbit hunter of rabbits. She thinks the kitten is a rabbit in disguise. So the kitten hides all day. It wakes up at night, as soon as I go to bed, comes into the bedroom and climbs the walls for half an hour, then crawls into bed and hunts my toes, then goes to sleep for a few minutes (just long enough to let me go to sleep again) sits on my head and purrs in my ear until I wake up. To watch her climb the walls.

The sun still gets up at 6 a.m. Life is different in the country.

James Barber

We pulled him and we pushed him , we even tried, one on each corner , to pick him up, one on each corner but he went rigid . Like a block of wood. Nothing worked, it was lunchtime, and he wasn’t as tired as we were, so we walked away, to share despair, a beer and a sandwich. He walked round to the shady side of the trailer, looking smug, He didn’t need lunch, being already full of grain and carrots, so we decided to try again tomorrow, pack up the trailer and drive home, Bloody donkeys.

Half an hour later , me wondering if I might get my cheque back and maybe find a donkey a bit closer ( so we could walk home) we went back to the truck, “You start up , I’ll close the doors……” And there he was, in the trailer, eating hay; I think that’s when I really noticed his smile…

James Barber

How does a 60 year old donkey victimize you? French property laws are weird and designed to give ( even encourage ) aged grandparents to make their children’s lives difficult and complicated. The law says that all real estate must be left to the family, to be shared out.

Families, French or not, find it hard to agree about the disposition of anything left in a will, so all over rural France there are thousands of empty and decaying houses jointly owned by the descendants of spiteful grandfathers, who slipped nasty little clauses into their wills requiring complete agreement ( by every member of the family (their children, their children’s children and all future generations ) before the house can be sold. And it seems that a popular clause has to do with donkeys. and their maintenance , present and future . In other words, whoever does take over the house also has to take over and offer lifetime security to the resident donkey ( or donkeys). Until they die. Which can be 50 or 60 years down the road. BUT ( there is always a ‘but’ in real estate) donkeys are very enthusiastic reproducers.

The females come into heat about every fourteen days, seem to have no difficulty at all in conceiving , and after a year long pregnancy deliver baby donkeys. Which, a year later, are ready to have more baby donkeys . And on and on and on . .French lawyers are no less contentious or opportunist than any others, and there seem to be an increasing number of cases relating to the descendants of the original donkey (or donkeys) named in the will, holding that they are entitled to the same support as the originals, until the will is finally settled. Cousin Marie-Jeanne, aged 90, won’t agree to anything because she never did like the woman her sister’s son married, her sister’s son doesn’t like the woman he married either and so it goes on…

Admittedly donkeys aren’t very high maintenance, they just need feeding twice a day, a rudimentary shelter from the rain, a lot of patting and stroking so long as you don’t touch their ears, and they love carrots and apples, but since they have a habit of eating everything green in the garden ( and the neighbour’s gardens -things like roses , grape vines, daisies, spring onions and expensive shrubs ) they also need fencing and babysitters if you have any intention of traveling further from home than the corner store.

I’ve yet to see a real estate agent in North America advertising “House for sale, needs extensive repairs, lovely property, must be prepared to care for 7 lovely donkeys”. But my donkey is only 11 months old and I am not taking him to France.

James Barber

These are all the small guilts, the little worries that are as basic to all kitchens as the kitchen sink. Butter is a medium guilt, along with the extra-virgin olive oil (“ours just says Virgin, will that be okay? “) and “room temperature” — how do you take the temperature of a room, with a thermometer tucked under the carpet?

Finally we get to the really big guilts, like garlic, because somehow we know that nobody eats it, despite the indisputable fact of 3000 tons being sold in B.C. last year. So we sneak it in to our cooking, with our eyes closed, as though it were an accident (“my hand slipped”).

Wine is a big guilt (” will they know it had a screwtop?”) and from then on things get worse and worse and guilts of all shapes and sizes accumulate like odd socks in the laundry basket. The china’s wrong, the salt isn’t sea salt, the peppercorns don’t come from Madagascar but from Kitchener, Ontario, and the pastry, the bread, the steak and even the tomatoes just don’t look like they should. Neither do we, we look in the mirror, none of us is centrefold material and we feel guilty about it, every minute until the guests go home.

Pretty soon it becomes a habit, something to put on, like an apron, every time we go into the kitchen, and we look for ways to reinforce it, to starch it stiff, this terrible guilt. One of the easiest, and least recognized of guilts is the kitchen work ethic, which simply says that if you haven’t worked yourself stupid, spent hours worrying about the shopping for dinner and even more hours peeling, chopping, rolling, dicing, icing, stuffing, shaping and peering into the oven, then dinner will be worthless, and our friends and families, those world renowned gourmets with palates more delicate than nightingales and tastebuds as sensitive as the latest radar detectors, they will know and they will tell, so that we will permanently be branded as uncaring, incompetent and socially unacceptable cooks.

The basic truth is that most guests are simply grateful. They get a free dinner, no dishes to wash and the chance to go through your bathroom cupboard. They have a mild case of guilt, about things they don’t think they should eat (like the aforementioned garlic) but just so long as you don’t tell them they can live with it. That’s what foreign names are all about — nobody wants to eat snails, but everybody loves escargots. Liver is almost universally unpopular, but call it foie gras and you’ll get rave reviews. Meat loaf is not acceptable, but the same ingredients called pate — that’s a matter for compliments.