“Are you the architect of this experience?”  I look over my shoulder for the person to whom my guest is referring, perhaps a man in a crisp shirt with a roll of blueprints under his arm.  But it’s closing time.  The cafe has emptied out for the day.  He gestures at my chef’s coat.  “This -” He then gestures to the empty plates I’ve come to clear away, then the potted flowers in front him, the expanse of cafe lawn behind him.  “This,” he says again, his accent thick, “is all a dream.”  He nods to his partner.  “Tell her what you said.”

“The Murgh Makhani tastes like what we have at home in India,” she tells me in a soft voice, “only we’re not home…we’re here,” and she waves her arm at the mountains on the other side of the road.  “This is a time when we are trying to remember every bite we take, every little thing we see, because we want to hold on to all of this.”

Wow.  I mean, I think the food’s pretty good, but I’ve never received a compliment like that….architect?

That sounds….so precise.  Organized.  Tidy.

He doesn’t know what’s behind me…the kitchen, by 2pm, is a splattered greasy mess.  The floor behind the espresso bar is streaked brown and scattered with grounds.  The dish bins are piled high.  Now begins the real work of the day, restoring order to the chaos once more.  

I would love to achieve some degree of meticulousness in my days, to infuse my life with some semblance of architectural design and sensibility.  It just doesn’t happen in the world of living systems: barnyards, pastures, families, children.  Everything breathes, heaves, sneezes, peeves, craps, splats, blats and spats.  We blow up at each other, things get out, things spill and spoil, or we get over heated and toss aside all of it in favor of stripping our clothes to plunge into a pond or stream. 

But to these customers, at this moment, on this day, it looks like we have it together.  

We give that impression sometimes.  I’m afraid we gave Jenn and Nate that impression before they moved here.  They signed on to help us at the farm as part of initiating their own homesteading dream.  They bought a house with seven acres at the height of the pandemic.  Real Estate prices were sky rocketing, but they kept cool heads and purchased a well-built home that had been inhabited by hoarders.  The husband had passed away and the wife was in a nursing home, and their  son didn’t want to deal with the massive clutter, so they got a house and seven acres at bargain prices.  Their most important home renovation tool has been a dumpster.  All winter they worked at clearing paths, packing up boxes of things for donations, restoring order one tiny corner at a time.  That kind of labor is effective in the winter, when things are slow.  If you pick something up, something doesn’t automatically grow up or get thrown down in its place.

Then the growing season started.  And Sap Bush came to life with chickens and lambs and piglets, and Jenn and Nate’s own fields seemed to sprout laying hens, a rooster named Disco, new coops, a flock of ducklings, and one mud-lusting golden retriever with an obsession for chasing cars (ok…the rooster and the golden were our fault.  But they fit in really well at their place!).  

And the days grow long, and the grass grows tall, and everyone’s energy veers away from the relative tidiness symptomatic of winter’s somnolence …to negotiating the throes of a flush northeastern summer, where everything, from the lawns and pastures to the ducklings and the dandelions wants to grow and overtake the world.  And our jobs are not so much as architects, but as…well,….shepherds of life cycles: the livestock, the pastures, the customers, ourselves.

Jenn admits to me they’re a little shell-shocked.  The dishes are piling up in their sink, they can’t make headway on the hoarders’ remains, and they’re so busy, there are nights when 9pm rolls around and no one has given any thought to dinner.  

Our family should be more sympathetic, but it makes all of us laugh and reminisce.  Her experience calls to mind so many precious memories….The late nights I’d slip out to the porch to breath cool air and gaze at stars, for just a few seconds before returning to the chaos of my kitchen and the steam of my canner.  The times our kitchen would be so full of mess and dishes that Bob would run out to get us a pizza, because there was no room to cook; the nights we’d be organized enough to have dinner cooked ahead of time, but that we’d come home so tired baby Saoirse would fall asleep with a chicken leg in her hand.  Our upstairs bathroom sink is dark blue, but there was a summer it looked white from all the toothpaste splatters and the failure to clean.  The floors changed color from the shedded dog hair, the sheets got gritty, we named the spiders and the toilet smelled rank.  One year we wanted to decorate for Halloween, so we just left all the cobwebs in place. 

These are the memories that are swirling through my mind when my customer shapes those words and presents them to me:

Are you the architect of this experience?

And I burst out laughing.  “Why yes!  Yes I am!”

I find it hysterical, that he should perceive organization and togetherness in all this.

But as I stand there and talk to him, I have to recognize there is some truth.  My chef’s coat is freshly laundered, Bob’s inside packing away the food and cleaning the kitchen, Saoirse is breaking down the espresso machine, Ula is cleaning the bathroom, Corey is at the farm helping Pop Pop with chores.  I’m now officially “off duty,” cleared for take off, where I’ll go home and take a nap before we fix supper and celebrate the conclusion of Sap Bush Saturday with martinis and ice cream sundaes.  The bathroom sinks and toilets get more regular scrubbing these days, the dishwasher hums efficiently, and we even get around to vacuuming on a somewhat regular basis during the summer months.

But all in all, life’s still pretty messy.  It’s just less messy than it was at the outset.  

And it’s the woman’s comments that really stir me:

“This is a time when we are trying to remember every bite we take, every little thing we see, because we want to hold on to all of this.”  I want to hold on to all of this too, each delicious mess from our years building this life.

Jenn and Nate are doing all the right things.  At Sunday dinner, they entertain us endlessly with their positively encyclopedic knowledge on all the books about decluttering. Jenn wants me to guide her on planning meals better, stretching food farther.  She reads chapters from Redefining Rich about mise en place, the chef’s system for organizing space and working efficiently.  I know she wants to learn enough to make the mess go away, but I can’t give her that.  Only years in this life will cause it to abate.  Until then, Jenn and Nate, follow that woman’s advice:

Try to remember every bite.  Take a mental snapshot of every lovely mess.

These are the delicious memories of your life, of your adventure.  It’s not about what you achieve.  It’s about what you experience on your journey.  

 

Folks, don’t forget that my newest book, Redefining Rich: achieving true wealth with small business, side hustles and smart living, will be launching through BenBella Books this August.   You can help me get the word out AND earn a summer-long discount at our online farm store.  We are putting together a launch team of volunteers who can help promote it. If you’re interested in joining, details are at the top of the blog page at sapbush.com but basically, you’ll

• Pre-order a copy of the book
• Fill out our launch team form, which is found at the top of the sapbush.com blog;
• Promote the book through your social media channels
• Request the book at your local bookstore and library
• Leave a review wherever the book was purchased

But WAIT!  It gets better!  As an expression of my thanks, here’s what you will receive in return:

• A 15% discount code for anything in the online store at sapbushfarmstore.com, good through July 31, 2021
• A free digital chapter from the book in advance of the release date
• Entry into a giveaway for a signed copy of the book and a throw blanket from my store
• Official graphics for sharing on social media
• An invite to an exclusive virtual book club meeting so I can personally answer any questions you may have once you’ve received your copy.
• So please sign up – just go to sapbush.com, click on the blog, and the details are at the top.

This podcast happens with the support of my patrons on Patreon.  And this week I’d like to send a shout out to my patrons Peter Crownfield and Patricia Walters.

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Thank you, folks!  I couldn’t do it without you!  If you’d like to help support my work, you can do so for as little as $1/month by hopping over to Patreon and looking up Shannon Hayes.