Meet the Chicken Man

Last Sunday night Ashley and I were invited to come around to a neighbor’s house for a bowl of chicken soup that could be described as inspirational. Nothing odd about the soup being spectacular: our neighbor Susan is a marvelous, instinctual cook whose food is always unforgettable. But this was a Sunday night and, like lots of people with small kids and big commutes, we have learned the hard way that going out on Sunday night tends to have a deleterious effect on Monday morning. Somewhere during the parenting journey we’ve learned the importance of balancing the pleasures of Sunday night socializing with the stigma of being the kinds of people who drop their half-asleep kids to school with their school uniforms on backwards and clutching pillows instead of booksacks. So as a rule we reserve Sunday evenings for home, early supper, school-uniform-ironing, booksack-finding, and generally planning a strategic assault on the week ahead. But since this invitation had come from Susan, a neighbor whose facility for living beautifully makes even the most slapdash of gatherings a memorable thing, we couldn’t say no. Susan lives ten miles away, so calling her a “neighbor” is less a description of proximity than it is a measure of relationship quality. She is the kind of neighbor you turn to for gardening advice, for the loan of breadmaking books, and information on how best to preserve fresh figs. Hers is the kind of garden that makes you come home convinced that living off the land is possible after all; that country living can be wholesome and tranquil and sophisticated and rewarding all at the same time. Each time we go to her house we return filled with renewed idealism for garden projects large and small. It’s a great place for big ideas and discussion of things like sustainable farming and preservation of the rural idyll. So it was the perfect place to meet Adam Aucoin—the “Chicken Man.”

Read More