We have a new list...well...The List this time of year really takes on a life of its own, so I'm not sure whether we have it or it has us. In any case, this list comes a size large, so you have to make the time grow into it and "fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run" as Rudyard Kipling advises. With categories for the farm, a fast approaching open house and various individual projects, it looks something like this:
Freeze cornbread for the Cornbread Salad
Wash the floors
Cut the dead tree down
Make dinner
Clean the kitchen
Quartet rehearsal for a wedding
Plant tomatoes
Weed and mulch gate flower bed
Make dinner
Clean the kitchen
Plant foxgloves and wisteria vine
Throw in a load of laundry
Put in the pig fence
Make dinner
Clean the kitchen
Burn brush
Order bread making supplies for market
Teach music lessons
Make dinner
Clean the kitchen
Clean out the neighbors goat barn
Weed the strawberries
Fix the chicken waterer
Make dinner
Clean the kitchen
Cook chickens for Chicken Cherry Walnut Salad
Write the farm update
Call about a stock trailer
Make dinner
Clean the kitchen
Get field stone for the root cellar
Clean the garage
Hill the potatoes
Make dinner
Clean the kitchen
...
Notice the consistent and regular nature of dinner and clean up? In the near-frenzy of work on the farm, one of the few things that maintains sanity and regularity is mealtime. The fact that suppertime during this season is rarely at the same hour shouldn't come as a surprise. The kind of regularity our meals lend is of a different type. Whether it happens at five or eight, it gathers us together, comforts our stomachs, clears our minds, reminds us of the Provider of our daily bread, inspires aspiring cooks...and common table courtesy usually enforces a blessed silence for a short time (in most of us at least).
And then there is the kitchen, that place most of us know every inch of. Dishcloths are often a reliable barometer of the advancing state of one's kitchen. Ours are mostly threadbare and tend to be either mortifyingly grubby or bleached clean, with very little time transpiring between the two states. In a proper sense, perhaps our kitchen could be called threadbare. At the very least, it is well used. We know we are busy when the plates and cups go from the drainer to the table without touching the cupboard shelves. With at least three and more often eight people using the space regularly (mostly at the same time), it would be a stretch to say that there is a place for everything...or that everything is in its place. From a practical perspective, the geographical layout is deplorable and more than one of the outlets is finicky enough that you have to "nurse" it to get electricity (perhaps related to the frequent blown fuses; usually the result of trying to run three waffle irons or two crock pots at the same time). In spite of these minor glitches, this is where we are perfecting the art of efficiently feeding a large family on a healthy, economical, sturdy and even palatable diet. :)
Our kitchen is no bigger than it ever was, yet as we grow and change, it remains the hub of activity in our household. The attraction it commands it is as palpable as it is enigmatical. No one has ever really been in our home until they have come into the kitchen; preferably at the high tide of production when most of the doors and drawers are open and something is splashing over the top of a pot while half a dozen knives are clattering and at least three conversations are in progress. It is one of the less "beautiful" places in the house, but I can't tell you how many deep conversations are held over that battered counter, how many tears have been shed into the old stained sink, how many merry laughs have rung from the jumbled cupboards. Who could count the cups of coffee, loaves of bread, cans of tomatoes, burnt pies, broken mugs, favorite cookies, caramelized onions, mountains of dishes, saucepans of gravy, cut fingers, soggy hands, watering eyes, tingling noses and savoring tongues that are laid to its account. Never for a moment believe that kitchen work must be drudgery. Only drudges can make it so. Families can tear down the walls that divide them and establish the cornerstones of society while building the structure of a cake or reducing a mountain of dishes.
Around the old traditions and familiar habits of the home grow the changeful days, full now of new life, new plants, new gardens, new chicks, new pigs, new projects, new businesses. We even added a new bread variety for the Farmer’s Market along with the standbys and favorites...the common man’s Whole Grain Pumpernickel! My favorites are still the Rosemary Garlic with cheese in it and Aubrey’s famous Cardamom Braid. As you can probably imagine, by late morning every Friday, just walking in the house will make you hungry.
While your back was turned the woods tangled themselves together in a summer jungle and the grass grew rank and file all over the heated soil. The iris unfurled his shimmering walls and donned his feathery waistcoat and gold lined lavender suit. Leaves on the tree heights cast back the sun's golden eye from their smooth faces and shimmer on the breath of May breezes. The cool regal halls of the forest echo with a myriad chorus of birds and shelter the secrets of their nests. Every bit of the world, the vast sky, the fine dust of the blossoms of fruit, the jeweled feathers of the rooster, just shout "Glory!" day and night. This is the time when the farm is at its best, greenest, cleanest, when the shadows dance through hours of golden sunlight, while the bee hums his own tune at every flower. Here you can learn from the growing things what it is to be busy while at rest. The peaceful and idyllic surroundings disguise a ceaseless hum of energetic industry in the folds of their splendor. In fact, whether most know it or not, no one could truly enjoy the apparent glory if it were not for the apparent presence of effort.
Signing off to clean up for dinner!
