08/27/2026
(Almost Entirely) Home Grown - Episode 2
Today feels like the kind of morning when a sensible person would have breakfast, wander outside for a bit, and then start thinking about second breakfast.
Breakfast itself was a proper farm breakfast.
Potatoes from the garden. Green beans from the garden. Collards and chard from the garden. Ham from our pigs. Butter from Sunset, one of our cows. Eggs from the chickens.
Nothing fancy. No tiny portions balanced artistically on oversized plates. In fact, yes, that is a paper plate.
Because while I may have grown most of breakfast, I am still a mom. I still have a full-time job. I still have kids who need to be driven to hockey and tutors and approximately seventeen other places at any given moment. I love a good Diet Coke from McDonald’s, and every now and then Taco Bell absolutely counts as dinner.
We contain multitudes.
But this morning?
This morning was good food, grown rather close to home, cooked in butter (yes, I churned it), piled onto a paper plate, and eaten until I was completely full.
Then I wandered outside, very full and very content, and my peach tree caught my eye.
And there it was.
This absolute monster of a peach.
Apparently second breakfast had found me.
Standing there looking at it, I started thinking about how many people from generations past would have looked at the meal I had just eaten and called it a feast.
Ham cured because winter was coming and meat needed to keep. Potatoes grown because they stored well and filled bellies. Greens grown not because they made a beautiful garden photo, but because they grew, they fed people, and they provided nutrients when those nutrients mattered. Eggs because chickens truly are the workhorses of every farm.
Simple food.
Practical food.
The kind of food that would look perfectly at home on a heavy wooden table in a little farmhouse, with muddy boots by the door, smoke coming from the chimney, and somebody already wondering what might be available for elevenses.
And nearly everything on my plate this morning came from right here.
Food I planted.
Food I tended.
Food I raised.
Food I preserved.
There is something deeply satisfying about that. Not because I think everyone needs to grow everything they eat, or because I'm pretending I've somehow escaped the modern world.
Trust me. McDonald’s still knows my Diet Coke order.
But there is something special about looking down at a meal and realizing how little distance there is between you and the food in front of you.
If the ocean were closer, maybe I could claim the salt too.
And yes, before anyone suggests it, I HAVE tried growing black pepper.
Three peppercorn plants have entered this farm.
None have survived.
Those plants are expensive, dramatic little creatures, and at this point I have approximately one Disney ticket invested in dead pepper vines.
So the pepper can come from the grocery store.
Even hobbits have to trade for something.
For now, though, I am full, content, standing outside on an absolutely gorgeous late-summer morning, and apparently about to eat a peach the size of a small planet for second breakfast.
Maybe the good life has always looked something like this.
A full belly.
Food on the table.
Something growing outside.
People you love who need you to drive them somewhere.
And second breakfast waiting on a tree.
Preferably served on a paper plate, because I already have enough dishes.
