Family Time

Even before farm life we had fun family nights around the dinner table. We will never forget the night Philip danced the fat belly irish beer dance and made Maggie laugh so hard she threw up.

Even here on the farm one would think we would sit down together at table every single evening and have great family time. But on Sunday, big kids have church stuff at night. Monday is hurry, sit down, eat and get to boy scouts. Tuesday we have friends come over for Bible study, so let's all get chores done and eat homemade pizza or pita standing up. Wednesday the kids take the bus to a neighboring church so that means hurry and grab your peanut butter sandwich and glass of milk the bus is going to be here soon.

Thursdays. We try to get as much farm work done as the sun allows. By Thursday I am hungry for a sit-down meal with everyone at the table. Even if it is 8:45pm.

We ate the last package of pork chops tonight. With a marsala sauce and the first fresh sage leaves of the season. Asparagus from the store since ours never came up. Carrots with ranch made with our own real sour cream cause I accidentally left some in the back of the fridge last week. Sliced bread for dipping into more of the marsala sauce.

As I tried to get the pork chops to cook more quickly, kids come in crying, mad, dirty, grass all over because they had a grass throwing fight. Hmmm. Wonder if the yogurt and tortillas they ate 6 hours ago wore off?

Hands washed, table set, milk poured (wine for the grown-ups for this special occasion). Patrick offers up prayer of thanksgiving, for our farm, for the garden, for the pork chops-his favorite. Somehow we got on the topic of drugs, and prison, and how in the olden days prisoners would work on farms, and what if prisoners today had to work on farms, and wouldn't that help them to offer a way to help people who need healthy food, and wouldn't that make the prisoners better human beings because working on gardens makes you feel better, and maybe we ought to write some letters to congressmen to remind them how vital working on making food is for improving life for everybody.

Then, as we licked our plates, Philip made funny belly baby and fish faces. And Rose laughed so hard. So then we all tried to keep serious faces, but none of us could. And I thought that seeing everyone, Thomas, Patrick, Maggie, Rose, Nora, Philip and myself laugh really hard was a great way to celebrate Thursday.