Do You Feel Like I Do?

Hey There !

Dave from McElhoes Family Farm/Belmont here.

As usual, life here on the farm has been busy and kinda boring. It's tough to find news for you when my last couple of weeks are really the same as the next couple of weeks, and the ones before and after that. I know the internet is full of cozy and wonderful images of clean and neat homesteads where you can almost smell the bread baking as the sheep and goats all line up to take turns getting their portraits and the chickens till and fertilize the ornate garden and make topiary and creme brulee in their spare time. Not my reality, I reckon. Although my weekly bread is rising on the stove.

I originally wanted to farm just to feed my family. We never really felt good after eating processed or store bought foods, and I really was lucky enough to grow up pretty old fashioned. Also, I am an antique myself. Or perhaps I'm more of a flea market find...

I really was just used to growing or producing a lot of what I ate, and my grandmothers and mom just cooked simply and from scratch. Much of the convenience food trend of the 1970s simply passed us by out of a combination of economics and a kind of blissful ignorance.

I never really thought a great deal about it, but as a kid I was fortunate enough to work for a couple of chefs just before the great Sysco boom hit. While they weren't afraid to use the shortcuts available, they prepared food from actual ingredients and not really from a prepared package as if now often the case at any price point. One chef in particular was from the Republic of Georgia, and even though there were many shortcuts available here, he was more or less unaware of them, and we mostly cooked whatever came in the back door from local farmers, gardeners, foragers or friends. I remember once making frangipane tarts from seckle pears that came from a neighbor's yard across the parking lot - added another layer of meaning to "poached pears."

Lately, I have been wondering why I keep growing and cooking, when there exists so much convenience. I'm in my 60s, and things are harder than they used to be. Most of my kids are grown or nearly so, and I do not see them as much as I wished.

But the farm abides, and I remain.

This weekend, my grandson (oh, and his parents) came for a visit. Although I am knee deep in moving hens to winter quarters, rebuilding fences and all of the tedious things that make up my non eventful life, I got a few moments to see things through his eyes. He's only a year and half or so old, but as I roasted a chicken and mashed some potatoes, I relived being at my grandparents house. I remembered being a kid listening to stories (understanding far more than they thought I did!) and I remember eating simple, nourishing meals, made with love, nourishing the soul as well as the body.

I'm going to sign off now, because I don't want to sound like I am trying to sell you a chicken. We certainly have a few left to sell, and would be happy to do so, but I just want to wish to you the same togetherness.

Now I'm gonna run to catch that boy before he has to leave.

Thanks for Listening,

Dave