Sweet Day Dreams

Sometimes I think I want to live on a farm.

The farm would be run on solar panels and heated by a wood stove.
And I would have so many chickens, dozens of chickens. We would eat eggs every morning in our great big, eat-in kitchen.

And maybe I would raise some pigs and have a few goats too. I would make cheese and yogurt, and top off my coffee with raw goats milk, straight from the utter.

And I would have blueberry bushes and blackberry bushes and an orchard full of fruit tress: peaches, plums, apples, pears, figs, nectarines.

And there would be a garden, though it would be the lazy man's variety, mostly stocked with dozens of varieties of tomatoes. And I would finally use my mason jars for something other than cocktails. I would learn to can tomatoes, and those tomatoes would be added to stews all winter long.

And I would plant a field of cutting flowers. And eight months a year, fresh flowers would adorn the table where we would eat our eggs every morning.

But then I wonder if that is actually what I want. I wonder if I would actually collect the apples and turn them into sauce.  Would I resent the goats that needed milking, the weeds that needed weeding? Would I miss the smell of the salt and sulfur? Would I miss afternoons on the beach and the knock of neighborhood kids at the door?

And so, I say in my spot, imagining fields of greener grass, grass that I am in no way responsible for. 

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This Weekend We / At Claire and Andrew's

I set aside the weekend to help with last minute wedding plans. My little sister gets married in t-minus 6 days. I was certain that someone would require my time.

We filled up the van with things that needed transported on Saturday morning, but when we showed up at the farm, all wedding production was put on hold. Instead, we ate a good ole fashion country brunch, complete with Scrapple. We chased chickens and walked down to the pond. Gus got his first driving lesson. We harvested a few walnuts.

We spent quite a few hours doing very little, while Tom convinced himself that he could experience his blood pressure lowering. And since the placebo effect is arguably my favorite effect , I think Claire and Andrew should be prepared for a lot of mornings and afternoons spent lazing about their home, while kids get plenty of space to roam. It's for our health.

My boys aren't country boys, but sometimes it seems like they should be. While Sena seems equally at home in cities, my boys have a touch of wild in them. Maybe it's something all little boys have. They are happy to abandon shoes and don baseball caps. happier still to go running after any animal that has the audacity to make its presence known to them.

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This Weekend: Bonfires and Goose-Chili

This weekend we celebrated my friend Andrew, an old-fashioned country gentleman, who is now one year older.  We celebrated with goose- chili and bonfires. Gus explored barns full of fox furs, and I watched my Dad shoot skeet. The lines between friends and family were perfectly blurry and faded as we hung out in Andrew's wonderful, old farmhouse. And I completely and totally regretted forgetting my camera at home.

This particular country gentleman is not the birthday boy, but it is worth noting, he is so firmly attached to place that his last name is the same as his town. Now that's country. I've never met a New Yorker with the last name Manhattan. 

It was good to breathe in crisp, wintry air in open fields. And it was even better to come inside to warm my toes and dig into the biggest bowl of guacamole I think I've ever seen. 

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