Soup

Lentil soup with onions and garlic. Carrot-parsnip soup with honey and fresh cream. Cauliflower and cheddar soup. Spicy vegetable soup with potatoes and carrots. Pureed root soup with cheddar cheese. Potato-leek soup. French onion soup with crusty bread and good cheese.

My diet these past few weeks has been mostly soup. This week I've had soup every day for lunch, and a couple nights for dinner, as well. Not only is it easy and endlessly variable, but there is something absolutley essential about coming in from the cold every afternoon to a house scented with the rich steam of hot broth, garlic, and onions. After a morning of working muscles, wind-blown faces, dirt-encrusted hands, and the weathered handles of forks and shovels, there is nothing better than a bowl of heart and bone-warming soup.

Lunch at Maggie's Farm is a communal endeavor. Every day one or two people are responsible for making lunch for the whole crew. Though there are no formal rules about it, we seem to have soup four days out of five. I never get sick of it. In the fall, it is one of the few things I want to eat: good soup, roasted roots, and greens are the mainstays of my diet.

I truly believe that good food, food that comes from earth you know, is an essential ingredient to health and happiness. Soup has been a huge part of my experience here. It sustains me and reenergizes me in the middle of the day, warms me inside and out, and connects me to the land where the vegetables and meat that go into the pot each day are grown.

I am trying to do big things with small details. Keeping the land healthy begins with reaping its bounties. Lives are made up of light on grass, familiar hands, frosty mornings, pots of soup. These are the things we touch and see and taste every day. They have a lot to teach us about how to live our lives, how to walk on the earth, how to communicate with other creatures. Even a bowl of steaming fall soup, seemingly unimportant, can become a catalyst of change.