You know we've been kicking along here on the farm for a year, running the market stall for six months ahead of that. We're having a good go at figuring it out, making a living farming on a very small acreage, rather than just homesteading and living sustainably which frankly would be cheaper. 

A lovely lady who is in charge of the meat puchasing for an organic buying club contacted me recently about chickens, and she and her friend and six children between them showed up today to pick up an entire batch of freshly processed pastured free-range chickens. 

We had a walk around the farm and chatted about sustainable food and small farms and chickens and pigs and coffee. It was lovely. And for the first time (maybe I'm really very slow) I felt part of something bigger. When we started here we were so busy running to try and keep livestock alive and figure out what we're supposed to plant when and baking baking baking that I never really articulated our reason for being, you know? Yes, we wanted to grow and raise clean food for our own family but now we're raising it for lots of other people's families and that is super cool. I felt a little bit proud of that for the first time today. 

Because instead of just complaining about the supermarkets which I've done a lot of, we're actually offering an alternative. Little bit proud.

It's school holidays. While Adam was at the abattoir we weeded self-seeded tomatoes out of the carrots and picked all the green beans in the house vegie garden. We cut back the basil (dramatically) and made a lot of pesto. 

You can see the bottom of our menu board here. Here's the whole thing:

I never intended to blog this board otherwise I might have subconsciously put slightly flasher meals on this week. This board is mainly for Henry who always likes to know what his next meal is. Sometimes people edit it – I think Dad rubbed off the green beans on Friday when I had a sudden mad desire for wombok salad with the trout. The board works well. I get a lot of feedback from the smallies about it. 

I can tell you for sure there'll be basil pesto all over next week's menu. Pesto and beans. Seven different ways. 

Thanks for hanging out with us on this ride of ours. I appreciate your company.

xxx