I can't remember when Susan Branch first entered my consciousness. I just remember being utterly enchanted by her life and her books. I think she was the original blogger – only on paper. She had that same style of openness and sharing of her life that bloggers have.
I felt invited into her world – like I could show up on her door step and she would welcome me in and whip up something wonderful for us to eat. Then she would show me her latest watercolors for her upcoming cookbook.
One thing that has always stayed with me is my absolute lust for her little kitchen garden. She had a teeny picture of it on the end paper in one of her books. I have carried that picture in my mind for about 15 years now.
It has always been my intention to have a kitchen garden, surrounded by a white picket fence just like that. Now my intention is going to come into fruition.
Our plan is to have the chicken Palais be one end of the garden. There will be four raised beds with gravel paths between them. We purposely centered the screen door on the chicken run so it would line up with the gravel path down the center of the garden.
I am thinking that the space will be both a vegetable garden and a cut flower garden and I'm envisioning a bucolic scene of chickens free ranging amongst the flowers and tomatoes, keeping the pest population down while simultaneously fertilizing the place (and in my fantasy they leave the vegetation alone…we'll see how that goes).
We hope to break ground this fall and get the fencing up and the beds laid. I'll drag you all along in the process.
In the meantime I wholeheartedly recommend you pick up some of her books (okay – all). They are the cookbooks in my collection that just fall open to well-loved, well-splattered recipes.
I too share your dream of my small flock of hens co-existing peacefully with my gardens… and for the most part, they do! I think the secret is to allow your girls access to an abundance of different growing things, and provide lots of the stuff they LOVE (like comfrey) so they’ll leave your other stuff alone! You will have to protect, like pole beans. My girls gobbled my plants down long before I got beans. They also especially loved to eat my petunias. 🙁 Your dream of a picket fence is lovely AND practical, and I believe I need one, myself!
I love Susan Branch books too! I got my first one years and years ago as a Christmas gift, and I’ve acquired a few more since then. I love her charming drawings and lettering. ::Jill