Late winter has arrived on our East Tennessee farm with temps to match the season. And with cold weather my thoughts always turn to gumbo — of the chicken and sausage variety, sans okra, because only New Orleanians and Yankees would have it any other way. That I also have a nephew and niece who plop potato salad into their gumbo, as if they were Germans living in Roberts Cove, we will not mention further lest we get into the politics of excommunication.
Yesterday, one of Cindy’s nephews, his wife, and their three children (ages 8, 10, and 13) visited the farm. They had fled the home parishes around New Orleans in advance of the Mardi Gras invaders. Each year, the week of Fat Tuesday, a kind of reverse migration takes place. As tens of thousands head south to catch cheap beads and vomit Hurricanes in the gutters, thousands of natives head north to eat funnel cakes in the Smokies and revel in never-before-seen glimpses of rocks and snow.
After our NOLA crew had made their snow angels and taken in enough alien rock forms to sate even the most deprived swamp dweller, they turned their sights on our farm for an afternoon. Typically, kids on the farm drive me nuts. Five minutes into the visit, they’re already huddled back down in the car and staring at their e-devices. Not these kids.
We started the stopover, as is our wont, by serving food. Although we were warned in advance that the kids were picky eaters, we still fixed what we wanted: gumbo. It was with some relief and much pleasure that we watched each kid scrape the bowl clean and pronounce lunch “delicious.” They exhibited both good manners and, I must say, great judgment.
They then excused themselves and spent the rest of the afternoon tearing around the farm, playing with the three dogs, feeding weanling pigs, collecting eggs, holding lambs, and even helping Cindy feed the bees —behaving in general like kids should and so seldom do. It was all very encouraging.
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Reading this weekend: How to Burn a Goat (Moore), a delightful and funny memoir of short pieces on the farming life, interspersed with longer pieces on academics and agrarianism. I first read some of the essays when they showed up on the Front Porch Republic and was pleased when a review copy appeared in the mailbox.