Dominican Friar Lays Egg on Ash Wednesday!

Today is the feast of the blessed martyr Saint Polycarp (he of many fishes). Burned alive in Rome for the crime of being a Christian bishop, he was a disciple of Saint John the Apostle.

Although I could wax on and on about the great Polycarp, I’m not going to, for as the headline to this post reveals, a truly incredible event has taken place in our time.

Now I have an old beat-up paperback that makes great brainless reading called News and Rumor in Renaissance Europe – The Fugger Newsletters. This book contains contemporary reports from the various Fugger agents throughout Europe to their main office.

As you might expect, much of it involves political and economic reports at the scene – there is a whole section of reports from Spain, Holland, and England regarding the progress of the Spanish Armada for instance.

But in addition to what we might consider the “Six o’Clock News Reports” there are also a whole host of reports that might have come right out of “Weekly World News“.

Things like “Frightful apparition in the skies of Vienna”, “Antichrist born in Babylonian village”, that sort of thing.

Well, yesterday, Ash Wednesday, a Dominican Friar laid an egg for the first time. Her name is Violet.

Wait, did I say Dominican Friar? I meant Dominique Fryer. Sorry for the confusion.

The Dominiques were named after Dominicans because of their black and white colour scheme. You can see how I made the mistake.

Anyway, in a supreme bit of irony, our first chicken egg appeared on Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten fast.

I’m sure there’s a real joke in there somewhere, but I can’t quite smoke it out.

It was a tiny little egg, but absolutely great for a first effort. Francine had it fried for breakfast this morning and pronounced it delicious.

At some point, I’ll publish some ruminations about our urban farm, but for the moment I’ll just leave you with the egg: