Newest Member of the Flock

By DinaIt is Saturday and Thanksgiving is behind us.  Erik and I are lounging around in our PJs reflecting on (and recovering from) what was a three-day knock-out parade of family bonding, farm-to-table values, and a few (rather large) surprises. We’re wiped out, but we’re feeling especially grateful.To explain:Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday. There are the traditional foods, which make menu-planning a joyful variations-on-a-theme pursuit and the focus is on gratitude rather than acquisition (other than a third-helping of pie). But we also love Thanksgiving because, at its root, it’s an agrarian holiday – a celebration of the earth’s bounty as well as the bare recognition of our connection to land and to the marriage of labor + dirt.This year we set out to celebrate like never before – for lots of reasons.First, we can finally lay claim to the dirt part and not just the gratitude part of Thanksgiving. Our goal was to source as much of the dinner’s fruit, vegetables, herbs, meat and eggs as possible from our own backyard or from Maggie’s Farm, where Erik is a student farmer.Second, we somehow lured a large swath of my family from across the country onto airplanes and to our home in Boston, and amazingly managed to keep most of this a secret from my beloved grandparents.  We had them all as our captive audience for three days, and we seized the opportunity to try and convince them that quitting our jobs and starting a farm is not crazy talk.  The evening of celebration would be our stage, on which the very physical act of growing, preparing and sharing food would make manifest the values propelling us from our professional/corporate lives into the rural world of cows and carrots.And the third reason, well, we’ll get there. But first, to the killing:Erik spent the days leading up to our feast covered in feathers and blood. Sunday was ‘graduation day’ for the 36 broad-breasted white turkeys at Sentinel Elm, and Tuesday was the final retirement day for 30 Araucana laying hens.It’s funny the preferences one can develop in the course of various kinds of work. This was our actual phone conversation on Tuesday afternoon:Me: “Hi, sweetie. How was your day?”Erik: “Ug. Processed chickens all day.”Me: “Oh, how was that?”Erik: “I like killing turkeys much better.”He gave me three reasons why: 1. Butchering laying chickens doesn’t smell great.  And they’re full of eggs in various stages of production and the yolks sometimes leak all over the insides. 2. It’s much easier to eviscerate a turkey because the organs are so much larger. Finding and separating out the gizzards, hearts and livers and keeping the bile sack intact is a snap compared to the tiny toy parts of a chicken. And 3. Chickens are layered with chunky yellow fat, whereas turkeys are relatively lean birds.Erik arrived home late on Tuesday covered in grime and carrying a huge armload of farm goodies: pumpkins, squash, potatoes, turnips, radishes, garlic, leeks, onions and, of course, one of the now-cold and naked Sentinel Elm turkeys. I had already transformed several-dozen farm eggs into cardamom vanilla bean gelato and turned gads of kale, butternut squash and pork into the best stuffing in the universe. All of that was in the freezer along with potato rolls and pie crusts.  Erik’s recent haul triggered a renewed fury in the kitchen, resulting in pumpkin pies, potato-turnip mash with roasted garlic and leeks – and a very late night. But by Wednesday, we were ready for the arrival of my grandparents – our guests of honor.The next few days are still a blur: my aunt, uncle and cousins arrived, which shocked the heck out of Grandma Dorothy and Grandpa Irv. Two of my four parents (complicated era we live in, no?) arrived, carrying up pumpkins from the garden and loads of cheer. My aunt Leslie pulled the meal’s carrots from our garden in a riot of childlike delight and then worked herself ragged peeling and roasting and washing and plating.Everyone pitched in to usher our meal from fridge to oven to table and by six-thirty, we all gathered round our plates, looking at funny little cards stamped with the name of curious species of birds. The cards were folded in half and tied with string:Fluffy-Backed Tit-Babbler.Six-Plumed Bird of Paradise.Rainbow Lorikeet.Piping Plover.Arctic Tern.The task was to match yourself up with the bird that best embodied your essence. This took a while. Meanwhile the food was getting cold and I was getting impatient – and nervous.Laughter, musical chairs and not a little chaos ensued, but eventually our guests claimed their plates and piled them high with the fruits of dirt and labor. Erik and I beamed as they ate and raved.My grandpa: “You know, you’re gonna make an environmentalist out of me.”Aunt Leslie: “I can’t believe how crazy fun it is to pull carrots from the ground!”Cousin Zach: “Mmmmmmm, this is the best carrot ever.”First helpings turned into second and third helpings, and then it was time to open the cards. Inside, Erik and I had written a brief note about our gratitude for each family member, and we read them aloud in turn. Last to go were my grandparents.Grandma went first:  “Dorothy and Irv; when your are near, we feel rich inside. Thank you for creating this wonderful flock . . .”Grandpa Irv tugged at the twine holding his card closed and squinted at Erik’s small writing. He continued the message: “ . . . A flock which we’re excited to announce will welcome its newest member in May.”Shock – tears – laughter – hugs, and finally, deep relief.  We no longer have to keep this secret that is literally growing too large to hide.It’s been difficult to talk around our pregnancy when we’ve talked and written about how we’re experiencing this transition to our hoped-for new life. We literally got confirmation of this long-sought pregnancy on the very day that Erik started Farm School. I spent the whole next month crying and puking. (It’s better now on all fronts.) And when we’ve said that we don’t really know how we’re going to get from here (urbanites with white-collar jobs) to there (agrarians with land and a modest yet successful farm) we’ve meant it on a whole new, and until now, unspoken level. How are we going to do this with an infant?Baby arrives in May – just when things on the farm go absolutely bonkers until harvest. Perfect timing, right? Well, we tried timing for four years – the universe clearly had other plans.We don’t know how this is all going to work, but we are filled with the optimism that comes from feeling like we’re on the right path.Erik’s at Farm School learning the secrets of dirt. I am in Boston, working two jobs and growing a baby. My grandparents are going to be great-grandparents. We don’t know the path, but we embrace it. This is all 100% good news.And for all of this, we are deeply grateful. Happy Thanksgiving.It was an abbreviated week at Farm School so the week-in-photos will be back next Sunday (otherwise you would have gotten 16 pictures of bloody turkeys).