Moving to an ecovillage can change your life in ways you can’t imagine. I’ve been reminded of that this month, as I cooked breakfast for 27 people taking a permaculture design course (or PDC) at DR for eight days.
Liz here, chronicling my cooking adventure.
When I first moved to DR, I was a newly graduated acupuncturist, and I had worked as a personal chef for 17 years. I took a job cooking breakfast at the Milkweed Mercantile Inn for guests staying at the inn and the many people who attend DR’s visitor programs, natural building workshops and other events.
This last week was a return to cooking breakfast for a crowd after quite a few years of focusing on my acupuncture practice and my straw bale building project. During the week I had flashbacks to those early days, as I pulled out all the organizational tricks I learned as a chef back in Berkeley and as a regular breakfast cook in my first three years at DR.
So there may have been other things going on in the village this last week, but I’ve only been aware of launching breakfast every morning. I’ve been hearing lots of construction sounds coming across the draw from Critter Kitchen, as they had set a deadline of starting to use their new outdoor kitchen in June, so I assume that is ongoing. The committee that oversees DR’s process for becoming a resident here has sent out a few announcements about people applying for residency, so that continues. Village Council meetings continue like clockwork, with a recent meeting about selecting two new members for the VC for the fall.
Prairie grass continues to need mowing, cherries in my yard and Cob’s continue to ripen, turning into bright red buttons on the tree, blossoms on the peony bush next to Clover have burst into a vibrant violet, releasing their intoxicating scent into the air for several weeks and then drying up, and it continues to be a crazy prolific year for mulberries.
But the logistics of feeding 27 people breakfast, and doing it well, took over my waking hours.
The Mercantile kitchen is nowadays mostly used by the Dairy Co-op to process the milk that they collect from goats and cows every day. If you’re sitting at coffee group in the morning, every day around eight o’clock you’ll hear milk pails clanking and members of the co-op will start bringing those pails into the kitchen to filter the milk and clean the pails. During the week, different members will use that milk to make cheese, yogurt and ice cream.
Different Rabbits cooked different meals for the PDC throughout the week. I decided (or K*, one of our programs coordinators, persuaded me) to stake out my territory around the breakfasts for the week. We all try to use as much local food as possible. For 27 people, breakfast included local hard-boiled eggs for each day, cow and goat yogurt for each day from our dairy co-op, Alline’s blueberry jam, and 12 homemade loaves of zucchini, banana and life changing bread; you get the picture. I started my prep three weeks in advance with collecting the eggs needed. I collected eggs from Fox Holler Farmstead, our village farm. I collected eggs from my daughter’s flock. I collected eggs from our local Mennonite grocery, which had a one-day egg sale of $1.99 per dozen.
The next big task was grocery shopping. The most I’ll say about that is that fridge space is limited in the Mercantile kitchen, shared with the Dairy Co-op, and for the PDC, shared with the other cooks. I got around this by using the fridge and cupboard space at the Hub.
On one such shopping trip, I pulled the car next to the Mercantile and made the first of several rounds carrying items into the kitchen there. On my last round, I returned to the car, and there was Cricket, Apple’s dog, standing in the car, with her back feet on the back seat and her front paws on the front console, looking expectantly to the future and beyond. I was hot, I was tired, and for the life of me, I couldn’t convince Cricket to get out of the car. I considered for a moment putting my paws, er, I mean hands, on her to lift her out, but I wasn’t sure if that was the right move. She continued standing at attention, missing only a cape to complete the image. So I closed the door, got into the car, and drove 20 feet to a spot to turn around. By the time I got to where we park cars, I could see Apple pulling up on the tractor. I think Cricket was hot and tired, and only wanted to hitch a ride to catch up with Apple.
Each morning of the PDC course, I rose at 4 am and slipped into the Mercantile kitchen by 5:30 am, trying to be as quiet as possible for the inn guests sleeping upstairs. I have to admit, there is something satisfying in bringing this commercial kitchen to life at the beginning of each day. Some discernment is needed for how to greet different people at the beginning of their day as they pass through the dining area. Some mumble good morning and head straight for the coffee; some are full of energy and want to interact. Regardless, some diplomacy is needed for making sure I get my cooking done and served on the dot at 7:30 am each morning, and still make the students feel welcome in what will be their home for eight days.
Most of the food I served repeated each day so that people would know what to expect: grapes, bananas, and strawberries, the breads with jam and butter, yogurts and toppings,and hard-boiled eggs. Each day I added something different to this mix, for variety. I made breakfast burritos, marinated tofu, ground turkey, hash (fried potatoes and sweet potatoes) scrambled eggs, apple crisp, and brown rice porridge with different toppings.
And so each day passed and the crew of cooks cranked out meal after meal, until the event concluded. I had a fun experience reconnecting with my love for cooking, and feeding people.
Liz Hackney is the editor and a contributing writer of this newsletter. She loves, as she recently told a visitor, to “nerd out with others about natural building.” To find more info on the Hub building project, go to thehubcollective.substack.com.