Smell Confessions

First thing in the morning, the dog breathes on my face.  Even though I brush her teeth every single day, Bisou’s morning breath is a little off.  And yet, while I recognize its slightly swampy overtones, it pleases me.  If it were the breath of another dog, I would probably be offended by it, but it is the breath of my dog in whom I am well pleased, and so it is o.k. 
  
When they first put my newborn daughter in my arms, I bent to smell her hair and was instantly transported back to the five-year-old me, standing with my grandfather in the pig barn.  One of the sows had just farrowed, and my grandfather reached into the wiggling, snuffling litter, picked up a piglet, dry and clean from its mother’s tongue, and gave it to me to hold.  I put my nose to its cream-colored bristles, and inhaled the subtly rancid scalp smell that twenty years later would be my first experience of motherhood.  

I've never met a stinky cheese I didn't like-- Camembert or Taleggio, the riper and runnier the better as far as I am concerned.  On the other hand, and this may seem strange coming from a former goat lady, I cannot abide the "goaty" tang of most goat cheeses.  It is the musk of the rutting buck, and if you ever go near one of those Beelzebub-like creatures, dousing himself with his own urine in preparation for lovemaking, you won't forget it.  Milk absorbs smells easily, and the scent of a buck in the farm down the road can contaminate the milk of a sweet-smelling doe.  When my does came back from their autumn visits to the buck, I would feed their milk to the dogs and chickens for three days before I could even think of making cheese with it.  But lots of  people appreciate a whiff of buck in their cheese, and who am I to judge?

For my part, I find the smell of skunk as I drive down a country road in summer pleasantly reminiscent of the Jovan musk cologne that I used to splash on myself every morning back in the 80s, when shoulder pads proclaimed our womanly assertiveness and it was not yet politically incorrect to wear perfume.

We Inaugurate the West Pawlet Salon Season

(My TV Show will resume in the next post.)

It couldn't be simpler. During the winter months, on a predetermined Sunday afternoon people drive up our steep driveway, stomp the snow off their boots, and cram into our living room. There is a fire in the stove, some wine, some dips, some nuts. Then things get quiet, and one of us tells her story--or his--while the rest listen.

The speakers are neighbors and friends, people whom we know but haven't had the chance to really hear in crowded fire department benefits or holiday parties, people with interesting lives and strong passions. There are lots of them around here. There is the world-class glass blower who lives just the other side of our woods. There is the painter/graphic designer/garden inventor who also teaches me yoga. And many others encrusted like gems in these woods and hills.

Yesterday's interesting person is Angela Miller, of Consider Bardwell Farm--see it and sigh here. She showed up straight from the little cafe that she runs on weekends in the antechamber of her barn--a kind of civic gesture on her part so that the citizens of West Pawlet will have somewhere to go. She was carrying an assortment of her magnificent cheeses in an unassuming plastic bag (and I'm not the only one saying that these cheeses are magnificent--I'm merely agreeing with a bunch of national cheese judges).

This is a woman who uses not only the right and left frontal hemispheres of her brain, but the back parts, too. Four days a week she's in her farm, turning cheese wheels, hefting hay bales, dealing with goats in childbed. The rest of the week she's in New York City, being a literary agent. After her talk, I tried to get her to say which world she would rather be in, but it became apparent that she needs both to be happy. And she is.

We passed around little plates with samples of cheese--cow, goat, aged, more aged, each named after a nearby village. We drank more wine. Cheeks grew rosy, and the talk turned to books. Then the sunlight grew dim and people had to go do evening chores, let out the dogs, see to the children, get home before dark. On went the hats, boots, coats and scarves, and the first salon of the 2010 season was done.

The Herbs And I

Just about my favorite thing to do around here is to go out early with my basket and clippers and harvest herbs. Like me, that's when they're at their best, in the morning before the sun gets hot. In the spring, before they bloom.

I gather armfuls of mints from the garden—peppermint, apple mint, and dusky orange mint. Gentle Melissa—lemon balm—is taking over a shady corner under the lilac, and welcome to it. The oregano is big enough to cut. And the eight lavender plants I've put in next to the stone wall are coming into their own.

The rosemary bush stays in its pot because it will have to be brought indoors for the winter, but as long as I remember to water it, it rewards me with its pungent needles. The lemon/rose geraniums are also cloistered in pots because of their cold-fearing nature, but it doesn't seem to bother them. They are putting out dozens of little pink (the books say “insignificant') blooms.

This is chamomile time. The tiny daisy-like blossoms wait until the sun is fairly high in the sky to spread their white petals. I pick them by the cupful, savoring their apple scent. The semi-wild rosebushes growing against the back of the house are loaded with still-green buds. I won't let a single one go to waste.

Feeling like something out of a Botticelli painting, I bring the harvest inside. I tie the mints into bundles, label them, and suspend them from the dining room curtain rods, where they will get only gentle northern light. In case you're wondering if the curtains get in the way: the only curtains in our dining room are bunches of drying herbs.

The lavender I also make into small bundles, which hang inside our front door: again, northern light, no curtains, and a scented greeting for visitors. The rosemary, geraniums and chamomile dry on flat circular trays made of straw, on the dining room table. And the lemon balm dries in the electric dehydrator, because that is supposed to be best for it.

What in the world am I going to do with all this herbiage?
I have definite plans for every bit of it, these plans to be carried out at some future task-free time such as the 24 hours between putting the garden to bed in November and getting ready for Christmas.

The mints will be blended into soothing teas to relieve winter anxieties. They will also, together with dried orange peels and scented geraniums, form the base of many gifts of potpourri. The lemon balm will gladden many a heart when infused in vodka for schnapps. The rosemary and oregano will liven up the stews of everyone I know, not to mention my goats' milk cheeses.

The lavender will go into soap. The chamomile into an after-dinner digestif. And the rose petals...the rose petals will be transmuted according to a medieval recipe into necklace beads that, when warmed by the skin, release a heavenly scent.

Stay tuned.