Bedding and manure pile: 50 x 12, 7 high.
We have spent the past couple of days in intense farm work, including the annual cleaning out of the barn (see pic). And, today we are off to a homesteading conference to help staff a table for the local bee club. Where, Cindy will also be giving a presentation on the hive. So, once again, I leave you with one from the archives that relates to last weeks post. I hope you enjoy, it is one of my favorites, from May 5th, 2014.
Sir, Respect Your Dinner, Idolize it, enjoy it properly.
You will be many hours in a week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life, happier if you do.
(William Makepeace Thackeray)
Odd, it seems Southern cooking is being celebrated everywhere but in the South. I’m a bit obsessive about cooking magazines, tending to pick them up whenever I’m in a store. And Southern cooking is always being touted and referenced as the touchstone of American cooking. And it is important, or it was at one time. But its importance does not survive in the glossy pages of a magazine or an upscale restaurant.
Don’t misunderstand me, there are great restaurants in the South. And there are great purveyors of food in the region. But good Southern cooking has always been a home-based cuisine. I tend to think of cooking styles like I do an indigenous music style, like bluegrass. Once it becomes precious, moves off the front porch into a regional music festival it is near death. Much like the ancient language that is down to nine elderly speakers; time to stick a fork in it, it is done. And Southern cuisine will soon be down to those last nine elderly practitioners.
I’ve always thought of Southern food as peasant food. After all, we have been an agrarian culture since Europeans and Africans settled these lands. We brought foods from our homes and we adopted from the locals. And we embraced the tomato, corn and pepper from points further south. There has always been a highbrow component to our cuisine, the cuisine of the planter class. But that was a food culture that, although flavored with local ingredients, aspired to be something else than what was native. A dinner plate designed to make them feel a superiority that could only be purchased.
The genesis, the glory of our food culture was in the garden, the hunt, the field all enjoyed in a warm temperate climate that allowed multiple crops and access to an unimaginable range of foods. My childhood was filled with gardens in the summer, catfish trotlines and duck hunting in the winter, speckled trout caught on the inter-coastal in the fall and Satsuma’s in season and eating so much shrimp that you were sick of seeing them on the table. Sprinkle in crab and crawfish harvests, venison sausage, gumbos, smoked goose, and pork in all its wonderfully varied uses and the Southern cuisine of my youth was worth celebrating.
But today we have given up that rich heritage of the locally harvested for a faux cuisine that has become the precious heritage of food magazines, suburbanites and Brooklyn-ites. The real food of our culture comes from the soil and dirt under your hands. It comes from the muscle ache in your back from working oyster tongs all day and shucking oysters deep into the night. It is the numbness of your hands on a December night as you pull wriggling catfish into the jon-boat. It is figuring out a way to cook okra because it exists.
It is a DIY food culture of butchering pigs and using everything but the squeal. It is staying up late to salt all your cabbage for kraut before it goes to waste. It is a real old-fashioned church supper with 200 competing dishes handed down from mother to daughter and you with only one stomach to tackle it all.
It is not found in a Walmart, a fast food chain, a high-end restaurant or, god forbid, Garden and Gun magazine. It is found on a dinner table with a family connected to the land and enjoyed with a homemade biscuit in one hand and a plate of love in front of you.
We are getting close to knowing those last elderly nine. Get your hands dirty, practice the language.
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Reading this weekend: Localism in the Mass Age, a front porch republic manifesto. A collection of essays devoted to degrowth, localism, and a politics and culture suited to the same. I found it, mainly, stimulating stuff.
Brian,
Beautiful compost pile! Do you let it rot down before applying it to your land? Do you roll it now and then? Just curious how you do composting on your farm.
I love the food, cooking, and family mealtimes from my youth as well. In Minnesota the variety of food was perhaps less than what you describe as southern cooking, but the sentiment was the same. Family kitchen gardens, fresh fish from the nearby lake, wild venison and pheasant in season, and the fall slaughter of chickens and pigs…all sounds very similar. Of all the things that connect us one to another sharing a home cooked meal is certainly at the heart of it everything we hold dear. Next in line is the pot latch meal, at church or a local farm that binds as a community.
.
I bemoan the fact that so few young people today grow up in a home where the kitchen is still the “heart of the home”. With both parents working and children involved in extra curricular activities, mealtime is sacrificed. Healthy soil in your garden creates healthy plants that provide healthy fresh food for healthy bodies, hearts, and minds. There is scientific evidence that the smell of fresh soil releases “feel good” chemicals in our brains that relax and energize us. I can’t think of any activity more important for building health than gardening, growing food, and cooking meals. It is rewarding and beneficial for our family’s health and humanity’s future, not to mention all the other creatures with which we share the earth.
Happy Sun Day,
Jody
Jody,
Nicely put. And, of course, there are so many areas of the country that have a memory of that tradition. One recurring theme we have run across, out here in the country, is the strange pull of the grocery store. Neighbors whose kids refuse to eat anything, but store bought. Although, that does beg the question, why let them get away with that…
Thanks for sharing your observations,
Brian
Brian,
Yes, I agree. If kids won’t eat good food put on the table then let them go hungry. They won’t starve! Sure, kids do have food allergies or aversions My sister couldn’t eat peas and I had difficulty eating egg yokes for years. We shouldn’t force kids to eat foods that literally make them gag (as my mother did to me with egg yokes). But eventually I did learn to eat them and now I love them. So who knows! All too often I see parents coddling their children and allowing them to develop bad eating habits.
My sister’s kids were “picky eaters” and when they would visit us they turned up their nose at toast made from homemade whole wheat bread and homemade strawberry jam because it had pieces of fruit in it. Even Cheerios weren’t to their liking. My answer to their question “What else do you have?” was “Nothing.” But of course my sister drove to the store to buy them white bread, jelly, and whatever cereal they preferred.
When I noticed my niece left most of the milk in the bowl after eating about half of her cereal I told her she couldn’t leave the table until she finished her food. Of course she complained to her mother who said “That’s ok, I don’t force them to eat if they aren’t hungry!” As if I was torturing my kids! So I guess wasting food is more acceptable than teaching kids to only take what they can eat. Parents are much of the problem with picky eating in my opinion!
I once chaperoned my sons class at a local Camp with an emphasis on environmental stewardship. They did this really neat thing in the cafeteria. Each cabin of campers ate together at the same table. There was a competition to see which table could generate the least amount of food waste for the week. After each meal all food scrapes for each table were placed in a pail, weighed, and recorded. I found it amazing to watch kids natural competitiveness kick in. Kids began criticizing anyone who took more than they could eat even as they were in line at the buffet. And some kids would eat other’s leftovers just so they wouldn’t go into the bucket. I loved it! Kids got much better at monitoring the amount of food they put on their plates.
I’ve also read that children are more apt to eat a variety of foods if their mother eats a variety of food when she is pregnant. Food for thought!
Jody
Read this one the first time round – and gushed I believe. Hmmm… perhaps I’ve outgrown gushing… but it does scratch the head that I’ve been pestering here for so long. Might be a testament to how well put together this station is from where I sit – my front porch as it were.
So, on the front porch thought… any favorites from the manifesto yet? Was skimming the Batavia NY essay online. He mentions baseball and a grounder he booted as a boy. Interesting that those there at the moment wouldn’t let him forget it later (making sure one does not grow to big for their britches I suppose). A similar anecdote from my own days as a sprout on the diamond makes the story connect so quickly. Good stuff. [oops, almost gushing]
A Clemian counter-point is often seen, the gush is a rarer bird. And, all the more to be treasured.
I wasn’t familiar with Bill Kauffman until I read his contribution in this collection. It is a stand-out, interesting you would have picked up on that. I think it is worth picking up. Their FP project churns out a weekly reading list via email if you are interested.
Cheers,
May need to look into that. Patrick Deneen from Notre Dame wrote the intro and I’ve seen his stuff before (still need to dive into it).
So FP churns out a weekly list… you’re not trying to butter me up on this are you??
Splat! And, Clem knocks another soft pitch out into left field.
Is the FP Project you refer to here the WVPR effort with podcast? They are on sabbatical now?? Am I too late to the party (wouldn’t be the first time).
Front Porch Republic… now I have it…
Today, in our peasant calendar:
Spring
The time of year you know is under way
when the first scorpio fly
points its schnozz at you
and you realize
it once again
isn’t satisfied with the way
you’ve put the potatoes in the ground
Now we’re talkin…
Agreed Spring a marvelous time of the year
One may frolic, smile, and be of good cheer
With a heartfelt ol’ lyric or rhyme
We’re sure to engage a good time
Sitting back gracefully sipping a beer
Taters in the garden and the peas all in a row
Bumble bees are buzzing, and swifts are on the go
Tulips waving back and forth
In the gentlest quiet breeze
Children chasing puppies and
One pauses for a sneeze
Dandelions all about, you’d think they rule the land
Farmer pauses from his busywork, a hoe still in his hand
Spring’s warming marshals fervent zeal
Sun on the face a wondrous, beautiful feel