Farmer Chris

“I want to be a gentleman farmer and just tend to my little garden—like Thomas Jefferson,” Chris said one day. Ever the supportive wife, I responded, “You know who took care of everything else while he puttered around his gardens? Slaves.” “Oh. Yeah.” So Chris has a new hobby: gardening. Farmer Chris has been planning his garden for well over a year now. He has big plans to expand, but he has thus far planted tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, eggplant (ick), peppers, and lots of herbs. I’d post photos, but a storm knocked over his tomatoes, ruining its quaint well-kept look, so Chris didn’t want me to. The timing of Chris’s garden is quite good. Charlotte loves her solid foods, and we hope to feed her as much as possible from Chris’s little plots of dirt. Of course, I maintain that all this “eat organically, buy locally” hoopla reeks of yuppie limousine liberalism, but I admit to liking the idea of us being able to make Charlotte’s baby food from scratch, knowing exactly where it came from and knowing Chris would never taint his garden with anything that could hurt her. And see, Chris creating his own garden has saved us from more than one trip to Whole Foods, which I believe is the most irritating grocery store on the planet. Best of all, Chris has a hobby. And as the exceedingly wise columnist Carolyn Hax has pointed out, your spouse’s hobbies are massive allies in keeping said spouse happy. Chris is genuinely interested in growing stuff, the project gets him outside, and it gives him something to do that isn’t a) working, or b) taking care of Charlotte. It’s a cliché, but most clichés are clichés because they’re true: Everybody needs a hobby. The vast majority of my hobbies were put on hold when Charlotte was born, but I have recently added a new one: making baby food. I invested in little pre-measured containers that you can freeze and microwave, so I’ve been a busy little domestic bee, steaming, pureeing, and freezing green beans, peas, peaches, blueberries, apples, squash, sweet potatoes, zucchini, mangoes, plums, and so on—and some very exciting blends of these foods, for added taste bud fun. Then I defrost two containers (usually a fruit and a veggie) overnight in the fridge, and along it goes with Charlotte to school the next day. Frankly, I think jarred baby foods are just fine from a health or quality perspective, but there’s something appealing about preparing food for Charlotte myself. Besides, I can better control the texture when I make it. I find the jarred foods a bit too strained and thin. Varying textures are key for keeping Charlotte open-minded about new foods. Besides, from a purely practical standpoint, making your own baby food is much less expensive than store-bought. You may notice that our two new (super exciting, right?) hobbies do involve Charlotte—Chris growing veggies for his baby girl and me preparing food for her. But I think my favorite part of Chris’s new hobby is spying on him while he carries Charlotte to the backyard and squats down to investigate each plant’s latest growth, telling her about the latest buds appearing And you know what? She’s absolutely mesmerized. Two homegrown peas in a pod, these two.