The Tale of a Stockpot

Up early and working efficiently, I prepped a pot of stock, and set it aside to soak for a while before I simmered the pot. When I went into the motor home to heat some soup for Phil and I, I took the pot to the barn to heat.

Hours later, Phil ran out of the barn yelling, "Amy! What's on fire!?"

A thick smoke hung heavy in the barn, immediately permeating my clothes when I went in to bring the pot outside.

As I set my burned mess of nasty bones and chicken feet in a patch of icy snow, I laughed ruefully at the All-Clad pot, no longer a gleaming, professional-looking pot. (In the photo above, you can see the pot as it looked as I simmered baking soda in it to clean it.)

See, the All-Clad pot had been my biggest splurge of my adult life. After Phil had owned his own business for a couple of years, he was earning good money, and I was tired of living with a pinch in the finances. I had taken a short cooking class, and knew that All-Clad was the professional brand, so I spent $250 and bought one.

And it came, and I liked it, but I sort of wondered: is this all there is to American suburban life? Happy marriage, happy children, nice house in a paradise city, and an expensive stock pot, but ... really?

Shortly after, our friends the Bosleys challenged us to pray for mission, for ourselves and our church, and we eventually found ourselves in Virginia on a farm.

***

Speaking of which, we are in a mad research phase, in between life. Multi-talented Phil surveyed the greenhouse location and drew up a 3-D model, including calculations on how much he will have to dig down and move over in order to level the ground. He also researched which greenhouse to buy (there are, it seems, dozens, if not hundreds, of options).

We were supposed to have a man come out to talk to us about metal storage buildings today, too, but the 10am appointment came and went with an interesting call: "The salesman had trouble with his car. We HAVE to move this building TODAY because it's end of year. Don't hang up on me!"

Which, since we have a friend who briefly sold metal buildings, and had told us this spiel verbatim, made us not too concerned: we prefer not to deal with uninformative, hard-selling (dishonest) salesmen.

We are also trying to come up with a general planting and harvesting schedule, to make sure we have crops all season. Not forgetting, of course, that we have other tasks, like shearing and milking and pruning almost 400 trees.

Fun!