At home, on the farm, we have a process when it comes to making dinner. I’m not going to talk about the wood stove (the bane of my existence when I lived there), but, instead, the produce.
It is my turn to cook dinner. Early evening, on holidays, relaxing. Its a few years ago. I hear the roar of the old motorbike and a lug hits the back veranda. I go out to investigate and everything I asked for is present and accounted for, freshly harvested.
Earlier Dad had asked me what produce I wanted, then at the very last minute he picks it all and speeds it back to the house. In a few minutes it will be prepared, cooked and eaten.
Now I live 700kms away, so the process isn’t so easy, and the produce isn’t so wonderfully fresh, but when it arrives it feels like christmas.
Last week Dad called and asked what I would like brought down, see, this time he was driving to Sydney, so space was not an issue. I asked for avocados, garlic, asparagus. “Sorry”, he said, “the asparagus hasn’t started yet”. So I was happily surprised when a handful of impossibly fresh thin spears arrived. “The asparagus started two days ago”, he explained.
When I was young, it was an avocado farm. I took them for granted, during the season anyone who visited left with bags bursting with these wonky orbs of deliciousness. When I left, I missed them dearly unable to bring myself to pay $2 for one.
This garlic reeks. Wonderfully. Dad didn’t grow this, he exchanged something for it at the organic market where he sells all his produce.
I left the beetroot and nubbly lemons, I had more than I could carry, and now to figure out what to do with my lucky haul.
