Things My Roommates Do

This guy is cool.

So, ok, move to a farm, get all country-living about things, meet some cool farmer people.  Right? 

But no, really, my cool farmer roommates are out of control cool.  They just make stuff.  Just make it.  Crazy, everything, from-scratch-y stuff.  Stuff I didn’t know you could just make, or stuff that I don’t know what it is, or stuff that I almost don’t want to know what it is.  And they do it after a long day on the farm when all I’m thinking about is that satisfying moment in the shower where you blow your nose and get all the dirt out.

This book actually exists.

These ladies’ resources are amazing.  We have this big book about how to do everything essential in life.  It’s like a country-living bible.  (I mean, there are sections on Recipes and Elixirs and Gifts From Nature and Taming Unruly Cats.  Notably there are no sections on managing your credit card debt or making your second marriage work, because country people just have themselves together way more than us other people.  Proof: THEY TAME CATS.)

  

There are also more specialized books on every home-made whatever that you can think of: Food and Mood, The Joy of Pickling, Nourishing Traditions, Humanure.  I am not making this up.  

Yay!

If that’s not enough, we also have the internet, which you may have heard of.  Check it out, Reader, there is lots of information there.  

And I guess we have free time, right after recover-from-the-farm-day time.  So all this mystical stuff just happens at the house.

For example, did you know you can just bake bread?  On your own?  And it’s that easy?  I went into Charleston one night last week to do stuff like get my eyes checked and find insurance and other normal I’m-off-to-live-on-a-farm things, and when I got back one girl had just….made bread.  Two loaves.  She said, “Oh, yeah, we were running out, so I made some,” in the same tone I might say, “Oh, yeah, I was bored so I watched 12 episodes of Family Guy,” or “Oh, yeah, I was hungry so I consumed this entire sleeve of Thin Mints,” or any other perfectly normal every day thing that one might do.  Multi-Grain Loaf.  That’s what she made.  Today we made Rye with Caraway Seeds.  My mind is blowing up right now.

This is where the swamp water grows-
See the fungus thing on top?

If you see this growing in something:
 Do not despair!

And they all make this stuff called Kombucha, which I think is Japanese for “Hahaha you stupid Americans, I tricked you into drinking rotting water!”  It’s made out of black tea and sugar and some kind of bacteria that looks like a weird mushroom sea slug creature and grows over the top of the liquid.  It looks like something that if you found it in some kind of bucket that you’d left outside on the porch in the rain, you would just

Putting fruits and stuff
 into the flavoring jars

throw the whole bucket out.  Then you'd sanitize your hands.  Then maybe you'd look into getting out of your lease.

The bacteria eats the caffeine 

and the sugar and, I don’t know, poops out flavor and bubbles, and then after a few days you drain out the liquid and add more tea to your giant drink-fungus.

Adding swamp water to the flavoring jars

But the drink, it’s great!  It tastes tart, and it’s carbonated (because you're drinking bacteria farts?  Don’t ask me, Reader, I’m learning too).  They add stuff like fruits and spices to flavor it—like we have an apple pie one, and a lemon ginger one.  It does some serious good to your digestion, too, so it’s got that whole “healthy choice” angle down. Historically I make different choices when I’m taking shots of weird stuff that I may regret, but so far I’m loving this stuff. 

Holy crap, people of Japan! This is delicious!

Sauerkraut and okra and green beans, oh my!

My one roommate is really into fermentation and pickling in general.  We just popped open her homemade sauerkraut (which we ate on homemade bread) and she has like 5 jars of okra pickling.  Kefir is a fermented, carbonated milk drink that comes from the Caucuses Mountains and now happens in the 

farm kitchen.  It tastes kinda like yogurt.  (Reader, have you heard of yogurt?  Perhaps seen it in a store besides EarthFare?  Because then, no, we don’t make it here.)

Things like baba ganoush from fresh eggplant and pesto from fresh basil and sunflower seeds just happen sometimes too.  As a counterpoint, when I moved in I brought Ramen Noodles and Coors Light in the swanky new Silver Bullet cans as my contributions to the communal kitchen. 

So now I’m learning about how to do all this stuff.  I’m advocating for hard cider and plain ole yogurt in the near future, but in the meantime I am living large off this amazing stuff that these wonderful ladies just know how to do.  I’ve already contributed to one loaf of bread—soon I may have mystical things of my own that I just do, too.

THIS BOOK ALSO ACTUALLY EXISTS.
THAT IS AN OUTHOUSE ON THE COVER
AND THE BOOK IS ABOUT POOP.
This book is probably going to save mankind.