Family Farm time

Things are different at the farm.  We have the kids on a different schedule which changes the dynamics of everything.  It affects our kids, our friends, and our food.  We used to spend the end of every week with our kids and send them to their mother's for the early part of the week.  Now we have them for a full seven days and they are gone for seven days.  Quite different.  We realized how much we will have to be prepared to cook when the busy weeks of school come.  The propensity to be lazy, use fast food, and rely on freezer meals made us shudder.  We have decided to precook meals to offer the best of our kitchen every day they are here.

Yeah, maybe we are a little food obsessed.  How great is it to find contentment by growing, cooking, and eating?  What a simple pleasure!  The joy that is found in the kitchen is the ultimate realization of what we are doing here on the farm.  And recently a baking bug has hit and Carly and Michael.  Now the kitchen isn't only the final place for our harvested crops, but it is a place of chemistry and experimentation.  They have decided that fresh baked bread is a necessary component in our kitchen.

So on the weekend preceding kids for a week they baked bread.  Carly made zucchini bread with fruit that came from our garden.  Michael used kalamata olives from the fridge to make an olive bread.  Both were waiting for the children when they arrived Monday night.  The product was very tasty and it became contagious to want to bake more.

So when the kids came we baked again.  Michael came over and got the girls to help bake some French bread.  In the above picture Melody is getting warm water to proof dough.  Later, Josie kneaded dough while Michael made certain that the dough was properly kneaded before going into the oven.  The end product was a plain loaf, an oregano loaf, and a rosemary & thyme loaf.

The kitchen is the canvas upon which we place the paint of our farm.

Perhaps that metaphor doesn't hold exactly.

But I think it is noteworthy to say that farming is all about getting to the plate.  There is joy in food.  There is stewardship in food.  There is even worship in food.  Nothing silly, but we can give gratuity to God when we eat.  Isn't that why we pray before meals in the first place?  When I was very young I received the cookbook More With Less from my Aunt Kathryn.  Although I have hardly used the recipes, reading about the Mennonite ideals of food as a resource from God and something to share with the world has influenced me deeply.

I want it to influence our kids too.  So when Melody is happy to bake with our friends I feel that the farm is a success.  When Josie harvests kale to make chips the farm is a success.

When Ethan asks about what plant is what and says, "I'd rather eat healthy food and then only sometimes eat unhealthy food" it seems that we are succeeding.  Yes, food is important.  But family is more important, friends are more important, and humanity is important.  We aren't trying to save the world.  But if we can make the world a little better, if we can influence three children, if we can receive love from our friends to the point that we are family, then we are succeeding.  And maybe Rosefield is a little patch of the world that has been saved.