aside: the farm dinner

Despite the infuriating way that M refused to acknowledge any of my labors, and despite the responsibility I feel for being complicit in their actions, there are some things I would be glad to absolve myself of responsibility for. The first that comes to mind is the farm dinner, an event M was eager to host, and which came to fruition in a way that deeply embarrassed me.

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When M and their ex first bought the farm, the landscape looked significantly different. The fenced in yard surrounding the farmhouse was lush and green, and the greenhouse that sits within that fence was functional. Amongst that beautiful scenery, the two of them had hosted meals on the farm. From my understanding M’s ex - a chef - contributed significantly to these events.

By the time I arrived on the farm, just a couple of years later, the area surrounding the farm house was brown and muddy, covered in decomposing hay from round bales. A full-sized mostly broken trampoline sat next to the greenhouse, now also mostly broken. Still, it was inside of the greenhouse that M decided we would host a farm-to-table dinner.

While I think it can be totally appropriate, and even important, for people to gather on working farms, the situation was bleak. In order for people to be seated for dinner, they had to walk past the dilapidated chicken tractor, where hundreds of fat, partially featherless meat birds sat crowding one another. Because the outhouses that were set up near the farmhouse were long defunct, we set up a bucket compost toilet in the woods for dinner guests.

Within the greenhouse, we pushed anything unsightly behind a makeshift curtain, and scrubbed the floor where the brooder had been set up for the first round of meat birds months ago. I washed stacks and stacks of dishes that had been tucked away in boxes without being properly cleaned first, so that we could set the tables. On the day of the event, a friend who had been hired to help both with running food and with entertainment, played a keyboard and sang, which was a beautiful distraction from the surrounding reality… and from the food.

Despite the fact that I was the one who prepared all of our meals, M did not trust me to do the same for the event. Their story had suddenly shifted - now they insisted that their chef-ex wasn’t the one who had prepared the menus and food for previous events, they were. I was asked to prepare bread for the tables, and desserts.

We promoted the event for weeks, and unsurprisingly, on the day of, M still hadn’t done any food prep. Also unsurprisingly, this was considered to be my fault, somehow. Because of the limited kitchen functionality, we ran between the farmhouse kitchen and the kitchen in M’s tiny house as guests sat quietly waiting in the greenhouse as their entertainment for the evening came hustling in and out running plates as they were ready.

While I can’t remember everything that we served, I do know that chicken and collards were on the menu. Both came out undercooked. The collards, typically cooked low and slow, weren’t on the stove until 20 minutes before they were plated. The chicken, the very same chicken that had been raised in the conditions that guests witnessed with their own eyes and noses, was rubbery and dark pink. M gave a little schpiel about how homegrown chicken tastes and looks different than what people typically purchase at the grocery store.

It is amazing to me that there wasn’t immediate feedback.

The music began, and people picked at their plates, most of them hardly coming close to being cleared.

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As the dinner wrapped up, some people asked for their dessert to go. I brought out the ice cream I had made - lemon flavored, and served in halved lemon rinds.

M’s mom held the little lemon half up after taking a few bites, and looked at me. She complimented the treat, and asked me if I had made it.

Before I could breathe, M took two steps up over from where they were standing to interrupt and take credit. Fine then, I can happily let them take responsibility for that entire evening.