Practical Pasture Picnics

Sometimes I crack myself up.  Case in point: the following excerpt from a blog post that I started last fall and never managed to publish until now.  In the blog I describe how difficult it was to juggle the timing of cooking with two small children.  What I couldn't, or wouldn't, say in the text was that I was also newly pregnant at the time and frequently had to take breaks from cooking very aromatic food to expel the contents of my stomach in a waste disposal system otherwise known as a toilet.  Just what everyone wants to read about, correct?  If this isn't a page turner of a blog, I don't know what is.  I also don't know how anyone is supposed to turn pages on an electronic blog, but bear with me.  

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I enjoy the occasional episode of a cooking show where the host shares a lifestyle somewhat similar to mine.  Let's just call her "The Frontier Lady".

Frontier Lady always has perfect makeup, perfectly coiffed hair and her house is spotless when she cooks.  Her kiddos don't fight, don't fuss and don't bother her when she's cooking.

She loves to take meals to her husband and hired men out in the pasture when they are working cattle.  (There's the one similarity we share.)

When she lays out the meals, her men eat on tin plates and drink from mason jars, wiping their chinny-chin-chins with cloth napkins.  They stretch out, tip back their chairs and scratch their full bellies after completing their meal that they just got done eating at a table that miraculously appeared in the middle of nowhere.  And it has a tablecloth on it.  Seriously.  C'mon, girlfriend.  Get real.

I realize that much of this is for show, and if I had a camera crew with me perhaps I'd put in a bit more effort as well.  Let me tell you how we roll when the cameras aren't rolling...

Last week Wesley ordered lunch for himself and five other men who would help him wean calves all that day.  I made a mental note of a potential menu and what ingredients I actually had on hand.  (I only go to the grocery store once every 10 days, if that, and sometimes it starts to be slim pickins' by day 9.)  In between laying out ingredients to thaw and chopping veggies I also had to feed and dress two little ones.

The entire morning needs to run like a well-oiled machine to make everything work and heaven help us all if a wrench gets thrown in it.  I laid the baby down for his morning nap and prayed that he would sleep very long and very hard.  While he was down, I kicked Kenyon outside to play and checked on him occasionally to make sure he wasn't in the road or the pasture.  (He has a terrible habit of crawling underneath the barbed wire fence to go check out the cattle.)

In the meantime, I continued on with my meal for the men: steak stroganoff, green bean casserole, cheddar bay biscuts and chocolate chip cookies.  Some of these guys only get one decent meal a day and I want to make sure I'm not ever the one to drop the ball.  I know I appreciate the same thing on rare days when I am without the kiddos and outside working.

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Fast forward several months and it is very much the same story on a different day.  I still make lunch often for the men when they are out working.  It sure beats driving all the way to town and spending quite the chunk of change for something I can make fairly similar at home.  Now I don't have to worry quite so much about the two kids that are on the ground.  They play fairly well together while I try to cook and load the SUV with lawn chairs, paper goods and foodstuffs.  

Now I just have to worry when hot grease from the stove pops and lands on my huge, protruding belly.  Now I waddle to and from the sink, stove and fridge.  Now I still make multiple trips to the bathroom facilities, but not to throw up.  I now have a little one that dances on my bladder with the utmost force and consistency.  

And much like before, I still don't have my hair perfectly coiffed, nor am I wearing a stitch of makeup.  (Sidenote: my husband must think I have a beautiful soul or some such nonsense because he certainly didn't marry me for my natural beauty.  It's amazing that he finds me attractive enough to keep having babies.  But enough on that note.)  There is no tablecloth or fine china setting out for the masses.  We fix our meals on paper plates from a buffet at the back of the car. Our beverage selection is pretty stellar as well.  The men have a choice of cold gatorade or wrestling a sippy cup from one of the boys.  

Perhaps one day I will be as awesome as The Frontier Lady.  Today is certainly not that day.  I'm guessing until I stop being eternally pregnant or carrying a small child on my hip that the men will have to settle for their slim pickins from a hostess without the mostess.  

Poor guys.  Their buffet was squished to make room for my oh-so-important laundry hampers full of recycling to take to town.  Priorities.

The cherry coffee cake today was quite the hit, and took quite a hit once the boys had a taste of it.  Very little of it made it back home. 

Stringing fire right before lunch. 

... and burning off excess energy before lunch.  If there is a haybale in sight, Kenyon will run across it.

Same story, different day, pretty similar menu.  Just waiting on the men to take a pause from their pasture burning to come eat. 

We've seen very little of Dad this week as he's been busy burning and kicking calves out to grass.  We love it when he's able to pause for five minutes and talk to the boys.