Farm Outpost

There is strangeness in the familiarity of this past week. At the end of last week, my vaccinated brother, who lives in our basement, got news that 1 of the 3 covid tests he had done that week came back positive. He had some mild cold/flu symptoms that developed into a loss of smell and fatigue, which led to testing. He’s feeling fine and no one else has tested positive but the kids stayed home from school this week. They had not yet spent a full week back at school and in many ways it was easy to switch back to our summer ways of adventures and activities together.

Of all the places in the world to quarantine, our farm in the Adirondacks Mountains is a pretty lucky place to be confined. I have enjoyed continuous improvement in my mobility and stamina, but I am still not fit for a long work day. And so my pace is perfect for the kids. We bring a load of rocks in the bucket of the backhoe down to the rock pile and then spend the next hour chasing baby field mice in the tall grass. I’ll do a hour or so of work on the computer then we’ll dig holes and castles in the sand pile. We defrosted our chest freezer and had a great time scraping the frost and playing with the “snow” in the comfortable warmth of September afternoons.

Lewis and Lovett are both entering new chapters at school, Lewis has entered “the grades” and is in 1st grade. Lovett is now in Kindergarten, which is a program we know and love because Lewis spent the last 3 years loving kindergarten. In kindergarten the kids have a different “classroom” they travel to every day. Each is a spot in the woods with a defining feature and name, like “Mossy Rock” or “Twisty Vine.” During our lockdown time in the spring of 2020 we took this tradition to our farm, naming various favorite spots and returning to them enough to create that familiarity of place.

On Fridays, kindergarten goes to “Outpost” which is the farthest classroom, and often involves cooking. This week we decided to make an outpost of our own on the farm. We had scoped out a spot earlier in the week and our mission was to cook and eat our lunch at “Farm Outpost.”

A classic lunch in our house, especially on weekends or “home days” is what we call “savory oatmeal” which is basically oatmeal with savory additions like cheese, vegetables, eggs and sausage. (The parents often add pickled veg and hot sauce as well.) These ingredients travel well and so we packed them up and headed to our site. Heavy dew in the mornings and recent rain inspired us to carry out some of our firewood to ensure our cooking fire was good enough. We borrowed a few grill grates from a tired and neglected grill on the farm and we had our cook setup.

It has been many years since I cooked over an open fire, and I realized my references for “hot” varied by use. I know what a hot fire looks like to keep the house warm, I know what a hot propane flame looks like on the stove, but what does a fire look like for frying sausage? Turns out that sausage pan got hot quick and the sausage was done in no time, with some added smoke-and-char flavor!

Likewise the oatmeal boiled very quickly and I soon had to poke down the fire and take the pots off the heat for a while to catch up in our preparations…after all, where were the spoons?

Luckily Lewis brought his whittling knife and we carved up a few quick eating/serving spoons and lunch has never tasted so good.

In many ways this week was appropriately timed. With last week’s return to school I found the old ways of productivity and doing creep back into my consciousness. Yet with the kids back home for a week I was reminded of how they see the world: as it is, right now. My return to the land of doing has been more about learning to not-do than learning to do again.