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What I love about homesteading is the way it brings you in tune with the natural cycles of life. The essence of our actual physical life here on earth is food and water.
On a homestead with your own water source, you don’t take for granted water. We have run out of water several times due to broken pipes or hoses left on overnight running our cistern dry. It is a humbling experience, not soon forgotten. It makes you very aware of how much water a toilet uses as you haul water from the cows trough from one end of the farm to another just to pour it in and barely be able to flush. Each time is reason to think about how many plants that water could grow.
But what really has fascinated me this weekend is the cyclical nature of food. While at the farmer’s market yesterday, I picked up some potatoes and tomatoes. While buying tomatoes I was thinking about the unnatural occurrence that salad is. A typical salad of tomatoes and lettuce just does not happen on a homestead – lettuce grows in the cool of the spring and tomatoes the heat of summer. They just aren’t ripe at the same time. As I purchased them from the farmer’s market, it was undeniable that those little tomatoes had some unnatural assistance to be ready this early. Even so, they were yummy on my salad.
Last night I turned the fresh young potatoes into potato salad and thought about how potato salad in its purest form is such a homesteading food – potatoes from the new crop, onions having over-wintered are now ready, eggs from the spring abundance, and pickles and relish being used up from the last of the previous season’s preserves. It is amazing to think about favorite dishes coming together out of this cycle.
This morning we enjoyed sausage link with our French toast as we celebrated Father’s Day. I bought the ingredients for this morning’s breakfast. In the natural cycle we usually only have French toast when bread is abundant and getting old. Sausage links are a true treat, long past gone from the early winter butchering.
I love that I know where my food comes from. I love that I can work in the garden next to DH and watch the little plants gain footing and overcome the odds of survival. I love that I can appreciate that they will give food and sustenance to my family this summer and through the winter. I love that this lifestyle gives me opportunity to ponder the gifts of homesteading and the gentle subtleties of life.
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Posted by Becca