Last Word: Isabella Rossellini
In 1952, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini collaborated on a short film called The Chicken. More than six decades later, the duo’s actress-daughter has written a book, My Chickens and I (Abrams Books), about the 100 heritage hens she raises on New York’s Long Island. Currently pursuing a master’s degree in animal behavior, the 65-year-old polymath holds forth on conservation, connoisseurship, and aggressive cocks.
Farms grow communities. Three years ago, I bought 28 acres from a developer planning to build 12 homes, and secured a conservation easement with the Peconic Land Trust, which preserves natural lands and farms on Long Island – something that affects quality of life for all of us. Since then, Patty Gentry, a chef, has started cultivating vegetables here and opened a farmers market that has made everyone in town happy.
I define luxury differently now. I no longer dream of buying a Chanel bag. Instead, I dream of good food, from farmers and chefs I know. That kind of connoisseurship, the sort of curiosity that leads to understanding, is the greatest satisfaction.
Diversity guarantees the survival of a species. And yet most farms raise the same broiler chicken. The eggs at the grocery store are either white or brown and all one uniform size and shape. I began acquiring heritage hens – Cochins, Fayoumis, Brahmas – in part to help save these rare breeds. And the variations among their eggs are remarkable!
I’ll eat chicken, but not my own. I can’t eat an animal I know personally. At first, I thought, “Oh, it’s because I’m an actress and urban and not a real farmer,” but Temple Grandin told me this happens to a lot of farmers. That consoled me.
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Isabella Rossellini on Why Chickens Make the Best Pets
My Chickens and I is a newly released study of the history, behaviour, appearance and distinctive traits of heritage breed chickens – told via illustrations, photographs, factual tidbits and anecdotes – by none other than Isabella Rossellini. The actress has long harboured an interest in animals (one need only refer to her series of short films and book, Green Porno, to corroborate that fact) and a particular penchant for chickens began when 38 chicks of exciting mixed heritage breeds arrived at her Long Island farm from a hatchery in Iowa – a far cry from the standard yellow farming chicks that Rossellini had expected.
From expounding the superior eyesight of chickens and the joys of petting them (“They are much softer than any cat or dog,” she writes) to a brief history of the evolution of chickens and details on the breeds she has (when it comes to the Hamburg chicken, for example, she is “enchanted by their unusual green ears”), Rossellini weaves a charming path through her experiences with fowl in My Chickens and I. Tracing her chickens’ journeys from chick to adult with her own drawings and the help of photographer Patrice Casanova, the star of Blue Velvet indulges her own fascination with the animals as well as offering an educational tour of her breeds, explaining why diversity is important (on her farm but, of course, in the wider world too) and the human effect on how animals have – or in some cases, have not – evolved to become domesticated creatures.
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In this delightful illustrated book, actress and filmmaker Isabella Rossellini shares her newfound passion for raising chickens. When a cardboard carton dotted with airholes arrived at her door, Rossellini expected to welcome 38 yellow chicks to her Long Island farm. Much to her surprise, her newly hatched brood included a diverse mix of heritage breeds-a discovery that prompted further research into the traits, behavior, and history of each one. Perfectly capturing the fine-feathered glory and surprising intelligence of these spirited backyard birds, My Chickens and I pairs Patrice Casanova’s photographs with Rossellini’s wry observations, fun facts, and hand-drawn illustrations.
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All You Need to Know About Isabella Rossellini, the World’s Most Uncategorizable Star
A neat trick, exuding mystique and down-to-earth affability at the same time. Isabella Rossellini’s silent-movie-star features and milky complexion have twice compelled the cosmetics house Lancôme to make her its public face—first in the 1980s, and once again in 2016, the year she turned 64. But Rossellini is also a freewheelin’ gal with mud beneath her fingernails, raising chickens and harvesting honey on her organic farm in Brookhaven, New York, out on Long Island.
A lifelong lover of animals, she has made a mark in recent years with her wonderful Green Porno series of Web shorts about animal behavior, produced for the Sundance Channel and featuring Rossellini in all manner of beaky and buggy costumes, delivering uninhibitedly silly but genuinely educational monologues. (“When they come out of the egg sac, my babies are ravenous. If I don’t let them eat me, they would eat each other. We spiders. . . are cannibals!”) As an actress, Rossellini is still best known for her performance as a nightclub singer in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, but she cuts a fierce figure in Hulu’s new dramatic series Shut Eye, as the matriarch of a Roma crime family that controls L.A.’s network of psychic shops. (A much richer premise than it sounds.) Herewith, some facts and insights gleaned from an afternoon conversation with the uncategorizable star.
SHE SHARES a birthday, June 18, with her twin sister, Ingrid, and Sir Paul McCartney. She has been thrilled by the McCartney coincidence since childhood, and, she says, “I always wish him a very happy birthday—mentally, because I have never met him.”
SHE IS especially keen on two breeds of heritage chicken that she is raising, the Campine, an ancient Flemish bird said to have been coveted by Julius Caesar, and the Cochin, “lovely because it’s very feathery.”
SHE RAISES her chickens for eggs, not for meat.
HER NAMELESS farm (“Everybody calls it Isabella’s Farm”) is part of a Community Supported Agriculture (C.S.A.) cooperative that sells eggs and produce to Long Island locals and to such Brooklyn restaurants as Roman’s and Marlow & Daughters.
SHE IS slowly pursuing, between acting jobs, a master’s degree in animal behavior and conservation at Hunter College, in New York City.
SHE COMMUTES to school from Long Island by train. She finds driving “boring,” though, via farm life, she has learned to drive a pickup and a snowplow.
SHE IS fluent in French, English, and Italian. She grew up conversing with her parents, the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and the Italian director Roberto Rossellini, in French and Italian. She did not pick up English until she was in her 20s.
SHE HAS spent much of her adult life in the United States and is a naturalized U.S. citizen. She feels American “in the way that I’m working—to evolve from modeling into acting, directing, writing, and going back to school,” she says. “It’s America that gave me that sense of freedom and possibility.”
SHE HAS two adult children: Elettra Wiedemann, a model turned food writer and editor, and a son, Roberto Rossellini (named for his grandfather), a model and aspiring photographer.
SHE RECALLS the impetus for Elettra’s getting into food writing to be the fundamental modeling question, How do I eat and not get fat?“Unfortunately,” she says, “the answer is ‘Do not eat pasta.’ ”
SHE LOVES pasta. So, she says, did her father, who, in the days before the widespread availability of quality Italian groceries outside of Italy, “traveled with pasta in his luggage.”
SHE BELIEVES that the foremost trait she inherited from her father is being a good raconteur.
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Videos
You may be familiar with Isabella Rossellini’s movies, but did you know she’s a member of The Livestock Conservancy? Today she is talking about her sheep and what she’s doing to encourage fiber artists and fashion designers to start using more wool from sheep on our Conservation Priority List!
https://fb.watch/4zRA9wG62l/
Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG-pe-q2KgI
We recently had the great pleasure of traveling to New York to visit Isabella Rossellini at her farm on Long Island. She is an actress, activist, author, and scientist. She recently earned her Masters Degree in Animal Behavior from Hunter College. She is beautiful, witty and a very talented artist.
Green Porno
Other
‘Impatient Foodie’ bridges the gap between the ideals of the organic, slow food movement and the realities of a busy life. Loaded with shortcuts, pantry lists, and more than one hundred handy and delicious recipes for busy people, this vividly illustrated, easy-to-navigate cookbook shows how to get the most out of your meals in the least amount of time. Organized by ingredient to minimize grocery store trips and maximize seasonality, Impatient Foodie offers easy ways to spin off kale, chicken, fish, berries, and more into multiple meals, and offers home cooks a variety of inspiring vegetarian and vegan options. Unique, friendly, and entertaining, The Impatient Foodie provides the ideal foundation for thoughtful eating in a hectic, time-starved world. With her immensely popular Impatient Foodie blog, her profile at Refinery29, her degree in biomedicine, and her stunning beauty and charm, Elettra Wiedemann is the perfect spokesperson for this reassuring and helpful message.
https://www.marieclaire.com/food-cocktails/a10171/elettra-wiedemann-food-blog/
