There is something deeply satisfying about eating a meal from your own land, in a room you created. Home grown, grass fed steak, with asparagus from down the back and hollandaise using my own eggs and butter, a salad from the garden, cheese from Daisy’s milk followed by rhubarb from the garden and home made ice-cream sweetened with our honey. 
Wonderful. The first meal in the Coupe. It was not really ready for visitors, there was white dust everywhere but we snuck in while the builder had a day off and spent Mother’s Day in there amongst the tools and ladders.
As you know my main objective is to have free days, when the farm feeds the farm, us included. Yesterday was such a day. We fed ourselves and the animals from the fields. From now on we will have plenty of days like this. I note the free days on my calender. I am very proud of these days.
It such an old fashioned thought. I know that the grower thinks I am modern and pedantic growing all this new organic stuff but really I am just old fashioned.
The wind was howling and it was cold.
But the farm fed the farm. A free day.
The more days we have like this the closer we get to self sufficiency. By living within our means we are able to sustain ourselves and not overload the land.
Of course this is not always going to work. Sustainable is more of an objective than a reality. It is very hard to sustain for long periods of time. There is always something I need from off the farm. But every now and then everything falls into place.
After lunch yesterday, the grower who crops the fields in front of our house, came swooping in with his enormous space ship of a planter and sowed the fields in field corn. He is also very kindly going to plant me a big patch of NON GM sweetcorn (that people can eat we certainly cannot eat field corn! ) right here by the lane. This has taken some negotiating. He is annoyed that I am being so demanding about Non GM sweetcorn because there will be weeds! Ah well. I said. I will walk the rows for you. Then he said, what do you have against GM sweetcorn. I just shook my head at the question. Where does one begin. I do it for my health, I said. And the health of my family and animals. I just do the best I can. Do you want some honey? and don’t forget your eggs when you come out to plant.
Good morning. In the old days (they were still doing this in the seventies when I was a foreign exchange student here) the rows were a little further apart and once the corn was about 6 inches high the farmers would run a cultivator behind a tractor between the rows, hoeing all the little weeds. This was precision work. But they seldom dug up their own plants. After a while the corn would just shade any other weeds out. The post-mistress was telling me the other day that when she was young (not so long ago) they would Walk the Beans. The local teenagers would work in the early summer walking the soybean fields with a hoe, knocking out the weeds until the beans got big enough. Even John walked the beans each summer when he was a kid. They would start early and work until it got too hot then off they would go and buy hamburgers for lunch and have the afternoon off.
I hope you all have a lovely day. I can see clear sunny skies appearing out of the dawn. I do hope that is it for the cold days.
your friend at dawn, celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
53 responses to “Free days – when the farm feeds the farm.”
Oh! Ice cream chairs! My mother has a set of 4 ice cream chairs. They’re highly collectable, c. Good morning to you and the farmy, and hope your day is filled with milk and honey.
I love it that you had a free day, with many more to come. I also love the light through your 3 windows. You are really going to enjoy that new space. Not quite a free day for us here yesterday, but we planted 2000 feet of potatoes, and then cooked a delicious dinner together. My children and spouses and grandkids around the table enjoyed our own storage carrots, our asparagus and a crisp made with our rhubarb. Delicious! Oh, and the announcement that grandchild #3 is on the way! Life is rich indeed!
Congratulations on your free days – this one sounds scrummy – and I love the look of the coupe!
I admire you for trying to convert the farmer, and the row walking reminded me of my poem:
To All the Lazy People
You who can’t be bothered to dig up weeds,
who use noxious chemicals instead.
You whose gardens are tidy and sterile
because all the bees are dead.
Instead of working out in a gym,
work out in the garden if you want to be fed.
Get fit to save your daily bread.
Thank you for giving us your oh-so-sane lifestyle.
Love,
ViV x
I love your poem Viv and it echo’s my sentiments exactly! A friend called me the other day to see if I wanted to join a gym with her – told her walking dogs, and gardening for three clients, plus my own 2 acres was all the work-out I needed! And much cheaper too!!
A free day is a wonderful gift that is well earned. The farm feeding the farm is a noble cause and a great achievement. Congratulations!
What a wonderful spot for a Mothers Day, home grown meal! What are those two cows gossiping about I wonder?!!
Christine
what a gorgeous view you have out of those windows! free days are certainly something to be proud of!
Walking the corn and beans sounds idyllic even though it must have been a fairly monotonous task in reality. I imagine chitchat between hoers and thoughts of the afternoon stretching ahead.
Love this post!! Having your own sustainable garden that feeds you and your livestock simultaneously is such a wonderful thing! There is nothing quite like fruit and vegetables that go from plant to plate without seeing the inside of a fridge or plastic bag. Wonderful 🙂
Spent the day weeding my beans and peas – not enough to walk through (well they are in raised beds so would be a bit difficult) but on hands and knees. They are doing so well with all the rain we have had. A bit worried about the cold night and another one tonight, but the tomatoes are still in the green house along with the peppers and cucumbers, hoping for warmer weather next week.
Love your romantic setting for your dinner which sounded much better than my bowl of special K LOL ( on a strict budget at the moment plus trying to lose weight)
I’m so, so proud of you and all you’ve achieved that I feel positively weepy. The closest I get to free days is village days in England where we source our meals from the produce available thru our village honesty stands, our neighbours and our village butcher who gets his chickens and beef from the village farmers. I’m so proud of achieving this. 🙂
your weepy friend,
V
You sound like one very happy and contented farmer person..well done ..it’s good when hard work pays dividends like that
Kill em with Kindness C! It works everytime….you can catch more flies with honey (literally in your case) than you can with vingegar!! 🙂 Love love love the photos today of all those happy Farmy souls!
Good day! I can sense the satisfaction of your ‘free day’ just oozing from your words. Alas, I will likely never realize this, but it’s not stopping me from trying to be more self sufficient in other ways!
The view from the Coupe is outstanding!
I am so proud of you Celi. All I could do was smile and say ahhhh when I saw the opening photograph. The table, the chairs, the view through the window, the flowers, the promise of sharing food tells the entire story. Virginia
We still plant and cultivate and hoe…mostly me…I hoe. We are still old-fashioned…not moving toward the computerized ‘stuff’….it’s hard to part with $100,000.00 or more for all the fancy equipment…so we just trod along. But you understand so I don’t have to explain.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
http://deltacountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com