Circle M Farm

Tonight we celebrated the birth of the season’s last babies with a delicious three-course dinner. That’s pretty fancy this time of year when everything seems to happen at once: babies born, fences mended, gardens cultivated, seeds planted, sprouts watered, sheep shorn, goats milked, produce marketed and summer scheduled.

Absolutely nothing can wait, yet there simply aren’t enough light hours in a day to accomplish everything. Perhaps as a sign, and perhaps as an invitation, I broke my glasses a few days ago, and am consigned to wearing my prescription sunglasses until I get to town for replacements. So my precious daylight hours are reduced by temporary blindness, and I’m frustrated in my frenzied rush to work til bedtime. Sigh…

Dinner was a priority tonight, and as I really needed to see what I was doing, I came from outside in good time to prepare an early meal, relative to the hour most garden season suppers are served. Feeling jubilant and confident, having concluded lambing and kidding with no birth casualties and a set of triplets to close the year out, I grabbed Julia Child’s Volume 1 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I’d bought the book used via Amazon in winter, but had been too intimidated to attempt a recipe. I did crack Her open during Easter, when we had foodie guests for the weekend, but quickly put the book back on the shelf after noting the recipe titles were all in French.

So, first I seared the Rib Steaks. This cut I wasn’t familiar with when we got our steers back from the butcher in winter, so I’d put off cooking it until I could do some research. Of course, there it is in Julia, under “Kind of Steak to Buy.” I sauteed the steaks in butter, “Bifteck Saute Au Beurre,” and then put the meat to cook a bit more in a low oven while I made “Choux De Bruxelles A La Creme.” The browned beef smelled heavenly, and deglazing the pan with dry vermouth about put me over the edge to sipping out of the hot skillet. The blanching brussels sprouts had that odd cabbage-cooking aroma that can be sort of good and sort of gross at the same time. Nothing a little heavy cream wouldn’t improve, though. Finally, I made a very simple romaine salad sprinkled with lemon juice and olive oil. I popped some of last night’s baked potatoes out of the microwave and dinner was served.

I summoned the kids from their various YouTube screens around 7 pm, thrilling the teenagers, whose constant hunger drives them to start whining for food the moment they arrive home from school. I remember encouraging friends to take the plunge and have babies when we were young parents, discouraging them from waiting until they’d saved a nice nest egg. “Just do it! They don’t cost anything at all. You just nurse them, let them sleep in your room and give them pots and pans to play with!” Little did we know that those cute little munchkins would soon be eating us out of pots and pans and house and home!

Such appetites can be a real pleasure, though, when they’re heartily appreciative of a meal you’ve lovingly prepared. Eli, our eldest, tucked into the steak and brussels sprouts like he’d just returned from the moon. Jake finished all of his, too. The girls, at the “formative” ages of 12 and 14, always enjoy a salad. But Emma actually spit out the brussels sprouts, and Shannon was fully sympathetic. We all agreed the rib steak was fabulous, a new favorite family cut.

Maggie voiced a most interesting complaint while trimming fat off her steak: “Meat is so good, but it’s just so much work!” True enough. This meat actually took us 18 months to grow, never mind the time it takes to cut and trim it, package it in crisp white wrappers, sometimes marinate it, then brown and cook it. But being aware of the effort involved in growing meat, and the resources in grass and grain, made our steaks taste so much better. Since we’ve moved our family to this farm and started growing a large portion of our own food, we definitely eat more appreciatively, more deeply. I cook more deliberately and creatively. Being connected to the land, the animals, the seasons and the plants themselves has moved us to slow down and taste the produce. This farm has given our family that gift, one we hope to share with others via CSA subscriptions and Homestead Meat sales. We’ve also joined other like-minded farmers and eaters in an organization called Slow Food that celebrates small farming, heritage animals, local shopping and traditional regional cooking. Eat something delicious and precious today!