As I walk from the garden to the farm house, smoke curls slowly from the chimney of the old wood stove in the kitchen and the house smells of apples cooking and cinnamon. I have my cane in one hand and a gallon bucket of fresh strawberries in the other. Proud of my afternoon berry picking I am. The old wood stove looks at the strawberries and says, “Don’t let me catch you eating those.” Oh my. She goes on, “They look good and I am sure they are juicy, but take them back to the sales stand. You can sell them old man. We eat only what we can’t sell.” Oh a product of the Great Depression she is. I laugh. The wood stove is cooking a big batch of ugly apples--the ones you can’t sell. They will be great in apple fritters, and in and on pancakes all winter long. But hopefully winter is a long time in the future and I am hungry now, so I ask what’s for dinner? The old stove says, “There is no space on top of the stove to cook for you tonight. So you get dinner in the oven. Tonight you get a pork tenderloin rubbed with lemon and garlic and then spiked with white and red onion wedges, red and green sweet peppers, and tomatillos cut in half. Add to it a buttercup squash stuffed with apples and crushed walnuts and drizzled with butter and honey. Salad? Fresh salsa. Dessert? A baked apple which you can have with ice cream.” Oh my the old stove is proud of her work and should be. Everything except the pork, lemon rub, and ice cream come from the farm. And as the old wood stove would remind me? All of it tasty but ugly food that I couldn’t sell. I laugh and am about to tell her that before I go to bed I will have another bowl of ice cream--with the strawberries. But I don’t. Slowly I have learned over the years that when things are going well, it is good to refrain from smart comments designed to jerk someone’s chain. Tonight I hope you eating local produce, cooking your own, and enjoying it as a family. It is, I think, a good way to live. The best to you from the farm.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 22:54:45 +0000