November 28, 2009

"If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need."  Cicero

Since converting to raw milk, my desire for bread and sugar have dropped precipitously.   We eat homemade bread around here, so I'm talking about seriously good bread.  And these days I can take it or leave it.  If we have fresh butter...well, bread was invented for holding butter.  But the bread part doesn't move me like it used to.  And I only notice this when I'm eating.  I'll be chewing through a sandwich or a good ham and cheese biscuit or toast and think, eh, that's enough of that.  Enough Of That?!  I've caught myself pulling the top piece of bread off and throwing it to the dogs. I'm almost never craving sugar.
This is odd.
We had to treat Elderberry with penicillin for mastitis.  So I'm out of milk for the week.  And what I notice I am craving is milk.  I've never craved a glass of milk in my entire life.
Is this what its like to be well nourished? 
The milk sings into the bucket every morning.  Just like Ralf Moody said it would.  And about the time she lets down I notice my hands facilitate the milk to the bucket more than squeeze.  And rhythm sets in.  And the sun crests over the trees and through the fence and around her tail.  It back lights the animals grazing hay in the trough to my left.  I lean my head on her leg and I keep milking for what feels like a timeless amount of time.  I get tired.  Then its over.  I clean her stall.  Pitch bales of hay.  Rinse buckets.  I go home with food for my family.  I make butter and hot chocolate and creamed spinach.  I make quiche.  I fill my children up with this food.   I half the amount of sugar in the cocoa and no one notices.  In fact, its better.
Then we go to the library.

2 comments:

val said...

It sounds so perfect, the images remind me of my grandparents. Lucky you, k. love you, V

Heather said...

That quote spoke to me too, in that link you posted. I am finding so much fulfillment in the making of things, the providing of real food, the lessening dependency on things to buy that were made in factories with unknown ingredients and materials. It is a truly good feeling.