Backyard farm kitchen

I have to laugh at modern kitchens - granite, exotic woods, stainless steel, ceramic tile, ambient lighting, and always perfectly spotless. “Honey, what are we doing for dinner this evening?” “How about going to the Olive Garden?” Why do people spend so much money, tens of thousands of dollars, on something they never use? It’s silly.

I love our kitchen built in the 70’s and never renovated - faded butcher block Formica counters, off-white commercial grade cabinets, linoleum tile, fluorescent lighting, and always a mess, especially in the summer. “Honey, what are we doing for dinner this evening?” “How about roasting one of our chickens on the rotisserie and grilling vegetables from the garden? Homemade ice cream for dessert?”

We have 26 linear feet of counter space surrounding our kitchen on four sides and usually every bit of it is occupied. Homemade meals compete for space with processing our bountiful harvests. No need for an appliance garage, the appliances are all being used – blenders, mixers, grinders, processors, juicers, peelers, toasters, pressure cookers, canners, dryers, pasta makers, ice cream makers, and our ever present rotisserie which roasts our broilers to perfection. 

If you have a spotless kitchen - I don’t care how much it cost – mess it up! Grind some wheat and make some bread. That will dust everything with flour. Peel apples, cook them down, and process them into applesauce. That will make the floor sticky. Mince garlic for pasta sauce or make dill pickles to smell up the kitchen. Dice onions until your eyes water. Cover your counters with dirty appliances, pots, pans, dishes, utensils, and enough butcher knives to make Norman Bates jealous. The sound of the running dish washer should be ever present. You should go through olive oil by the gallon and flour and sugar by the pound. Bulk ingredients can be stored in 5 gallon buckets under the counter or in the pantry. In a convenient spot right in the middle of the kitchen, you need another 5-gallon bucket for refuse – seeds, stems, leaves, rinds, peels, skins, egg shells, and table scraps. If you throw something at the bucket and miss, don’t worry. With all the other mess, no one will notice. The refuse bucket is emptied onto the compost pile outside or the chicken run, if you are lucky enough to have layers. If your kitchen doesn’t require a large yellow industrial mop bucket and wringer on wheels with a big rag mop, then you aren’t using it enough. If that is the case, take the money that you would use to buy a fancy kitchen and put it into a BMW to drive yourself to the Olive Garden.