What a joy Wren brings to my life and to The Coulter Plough. I love going to her house and visiting with she and her adorable chickens. Her home is surrounded by beautiful, lush Kentucky pastures. Her yard is filled with spring tulips, wild edible plants, redbud trees, violets beneath your feet. Her house is cozy and warm, and there is a tremendous sense of home and commonplace. Maybe that is in part because my Father was born in the same room that now serves as Wren's bedroom. 50 years before, it was the bedroom of my Grandparents, John Will and Lena Coulter, whom The Coulter Plough series is inspired by. In fact, the house, the surrounding acreage of fields and pastures of this one particular place in Kentucky is the entire inspiration of The Coulter Plough series. Sadly, it has been subdivided into tiny pieces. So strange that when I asked Wren to be part of The Plough, I had no idea she lived in the home that sheltered my Father and inspired a monthly Kentucky DVD series. But this is for another blog at another time.
In Episode 6, Wren gathers wild edibles from her garden area which is the same space of ground that my Grandfather raised his garden years ago. What an awesome feeling this is to me. After Wren gathers a feast of redbuds, dandelions, chickweed, violet leaves, and wild onion, we go into Granny's old kitchen and watch Wren prepare a delicious salad mixture topped with a homemade dressing of olive oil, vinegar, honey, wild onion, and a touch of sea salt. There have been many award-winning meals created in Wren's kitchen in the past 70 years and beyond, many of them by Lena Coulter, and Wren's beautiful wild edible dish just adds to that membership of belonging and memory.
