FARM HARMONY, FROM UNDER AN APPLE TREE

It will be hard to ever beat the time I had yesterday, sitting in the shade of an ancient apple tree, inside an old chicken pen, with ducks and ducklings muttering about in the grass behind me, a group of chatty hens scratching around next to me, a robust rooster serenading his biddies across the drive, a flittering flock of swallows swooping and swirling overhead and through an open window, and mama goat mewling to her trio of four day old babies in the pen behind the barn. Down the yard apiece - meat goats (unaware of their fate) and pigs (also unaware).  And at the farmhouse, on the porch, a comfy old hound snoring in his bed, and, inside, an escape cat, plotting. 
The peacefulness, the bright blue sky, the soft breeze rustling the leaves and grasses around me - all of it influenced my palette, I am sure. But I am reminded, once again (as I have been hundreds of times in my 70 years), that I could never be a farmer. I could never work that hard to achieve all that peaceful harmony. And, I could never, as Annie the Farm Kid does, name my food.

Sky Root Farm in Clinton on Whidbey Island