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Fresh From The Farm: Clean for a Minute

By Annette Codding
    What is it about something being freshly cleaned that is so nice? A clean kitchen, a freshly mowed lawn, a sparkling clean truck, a recently pressure-washed barn isle and fresh sheets…every one of them brings a sense of rightness and comfort. I have to admit that I struggle with the truck one, but I sure do love to clean out my stock trailer. There’s nothing like seeing that black mat shine and smell the freshness again after hauling a load of cows.
    I was thinking today about all of the things that I love to clean around here. Maybe it’s an instant gratification thing. Whatever it is, I love to get the job done and see the results. Even if they are only temporary. And most, if not all of them, are definitely temporary. Some don’t even last a full 24 hours.
    The kitchen is the quickest to get messed up again. If you are like me and eat most meals at home, there’s nothing unusual about filling the sink and doing the dishes a couple times a day. In fact, I have the amazing talent of having a sink half filled with dirty dishes and utensils before ever cooking the first meal of the day. It comes with milking goats and having the continual use of the milk pail, stainless strainer, jars and lids.
    Then there comes the dishes that go along with using up all of that milk. There is always a jar of kefir fermenting on the counter. Once that is done, the kefir grains are strained out, fresh milk is added and the process starts again. When I have a couple extra gallons of milk in the refrigerator, I start a batch of cheese. It doesn’t take any unusual number of pots or fancy equipment, but it all adds up and gets piled in the sink.
    All of the food I cook is from scratch, so that always means that there will be bowls, spoons, spatulas and knives dirtied in the cooking process. The other day, my little friend Nova was standing in front of my pantry, scoping it out for a snack. Her momma told her that she wasn’t going to find what she was looking for there, because “Mrs. Annette’s kitchen is an ingredient kitchen”. Nova took that as a letdown and I took it as a compliment. I will have to get the ingredients for her favorite snack on hand and maybe we will whip it up next time she is over. That’s sure to generate a pile of dishes…and smiles.
    Every now and then I get my act together and clean off the table, which includes putting up or putting away all of the vegetables that are usually waiting on me to process them, wipe down the counters, get all the dishes done, dried and put away and then clean and mop the floors. The funny part is that right when I am done, I go outside to let the floors dry…then I can’t cook or do anything else because it will all be messed right up again. I think I need one of those signs that says “My house was clean an hour ago, sorry you missed it.”
    I’ll tell you another thing that just makes me smile once it’s all clean and shining…my favorite cast iron pans. For years I struggled with using cast iron and keeping it nice. Then I realized that I had too much of it and didn’t use any of it enough. A couple years ago, I watched a documentary called “The Devil We Know” and quit using Teflon coated pans that same day.
    Now I can attest to what the seasoned cast iron users (pun intended) have been saying…the best way to have a good pan is to use it often. Nothing can make you use it more than throwing out all of the alternatives. Since doing this, we have a few favorites that mostly live on the stove. They are completely non-stick for most foods and for the times they aren’t, it’s mostly user error. And when I am done cooking, I immediately clean them out and set them back on the stove. My dinner is more enjoyable knowing that I spent an extra 60 seconds cleaning my pans while they were hot and that I can sit and visit with Brian after dinner instead of cleaning a cold pan.
    Here’s another one…freshly weed-eated beds and a clean mowed yard. That’s something that doesn’t happen around here too often, but when it does, I just want to drag a lawn chair out in the middle of it and sit with a book and enjoy the view. It seems that the grass has really slowed the growing in the past couple of weeks, so this might be a good time to get that done and it will last longer than usual.
    I know a lot of horse people clean stalls daily, but there are those of us that don’t do it that often. Yes, it makes for more work when it’s time to get the job done, but I cannot imagine how feasible it would be to try and clean goat stalls even weekly. Instead, the “wasted” stems of the hay get left on the ground and get trampled in with the goat pellets, then every couple of months, the whole thing gets stripped and it all gets added to the compost pile.
    Once the stalls are stripped, I put down some PDZ or lime to help with the odor, then spread a half a bag of pine shavings over top. I don’t think the pine shavings do much to help with anything other than the fragrance and aesthetics. The air is sweet and clean and it lasts all of about a day…then it’s back to being a pooped-in goat stall. Oh well.
    Several years ago, when we had sold the house across the road, we were just about done moving the stuff and all of the animals were home at the new place. The barn was empty and the whole thing was cleaner than ever and quiet. Eerily quiet. There was a lonely air about it and even though it was as good as it was gonna get as far as looks go, it was one of the saddest things I had ever seen.
    I remember tearing up and thinking how I would give anything in the world to have it all back. The kids, the animals, the chores, the messy stalls, the constant cleaning and care of a handful of needy things. I would have, and still would, trade the clean and quiet for all of those things in a heartbeat.
    Yes, I love a clean kitchen or a quiet and peaceful garden and barn…BUT, I will always welcome the work of a table full of produce waiting to be canned, a barn full of animals waiting to be milked and fed, carloads of rambunctious youngin’s unloading and bringing with them a hundred questions and a wholesome mess left in their wake.
    Clean is nice. But lived-in and well-loved rank higher in my book all day long. One is temporary, and while it does make me feel good, the other is an ongoing way of life that satisfies me deep in my soul. So, when you come to my place and it looks like there’s a lot going on, but I just wave it off and invite you to step into the mess with me, just enjoy it and try not to think about all that needs to be cleaned up. Trust me, it will still be waiting when I get around to it. Until next time, let’s just go outside and sit and visit a while.