Happy Thanksgiving from Christopher Kimball

I recently interviewed Pen Vogler, who wrote “Christmas with Dickens,” which reminded me of “The Pickwick Papers,” when Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Wardle and others celebrate the season in song…

But my song I troll out, for Christmas Stout,
The hearty, the true, and the bold;
A bumper I drain, and with might and main
Give three cheers for this Christmas old!

Today is Thanksgiving, of course, but the sentiment is the same. And like Dickens’ version of Christmas, this is my favorite day of the year. No presents. No shopping. Just cooking and eating and the one day all year that we pledge ourselves to be thankful.

Back in the 1960s, I was fortunate to work on a mountain farm in Vermont, the Yellow Farmhouse, which was home to Marie Briggs, Charlie and Floyd Bentley and the occasional summer farmhands, Onie and Herbie, plus Charlie’s collie and the well-
stuffed mutt, Bonnie.

These people didn’t have much in terms of convenience. If you wanted running water, you had to use the metal pump in the sink (there was no indoor plumbing until 1969), the oven was a green Kalamazoo wood cookstove, and most of the outbuildings were in poor shape, including an old corn crib, the horse barns, and the bunkhouse for Herbie and Onie.

But I knew that they were rich because they knew who and where they were. Charlie and Floyd had 18-hand workhorses—Floyd use to mow fields with his horse-drawn sickle bar that clacked as the wheels turned. Charlie used his team to seed fields and cut and bind the corn for silage. Marie was a great baker and cook, so every afternoon there was fresh baked bread, a thick schmear of butter, and tea, plus nutmeg doughnuts and hand-sized molasses cookies. And they lived in between Minister Hill and Swearing Hill in the shadow of Red Mountain which still, today, has the ruins of an old farm on top.

And everyone knew their place. That is, if you went looking for someone, there were only a handful of places they could be. In the barn, out haying afield, at the yellow farmhouse, or milking the small herd of Holsteins down the road on Route 313.

Over the years, I have been gently mocked for my heart-on-the-sleeve Vermont memories. Stories about being chased around the field by an angry cow with a newborn calf, or the time I smuggled home one of Marie’s lemon meringue pies and ended up sitting on it to hide it from my mother, or misadventures building a treehouse, getting thrown from horses, smoking corn silk in a corncob pipe, or jumping butt-naked into our small pond, which seemed to maintain a just-warmer-than-frozen temperature even in July.

There were, to be sure, hard times at the Yellow Farmhouse. Some of the residents of our town were true outlaws, dumping a dead cow on a neighbor’s lawn to send a message, and there were rumors of buried bodies up in Beartown. And there were whole families of bandits who were famous for jacking deer out of season—I chased one hunter at high speed down our dirt road at night and caught up with him only to retreat slowly when he grabbed his rifle—or drinking a 12-pack of beer daily, or putting a TV antenna on the doghouse (a true Vermont sense of humor).

But I did learn something about what it means to be rich in other things. Your word is your bond. Showing up for neighbors without asking if you can help. Never telling people what to do, just showing them. Being deeply afraid of disappointing someone. And never, ever complaining.

I often wonder if humans were designed for the world we live in. Constant jumping from one thing to the next. Not having a sense of place. Change at every turn.

I am fortunate to spend at least some of my time in a woods that I have known since I was four years old. Stone walls in the middle of nowhere, sheep fencing grown into tree trunks, the view across the valley from a piney ridge, steam rising from the sugarhouses in March, the screeching of a fisher cat, the sharp, brief yapping of coyotes, the rare sight of a bobcat in daylight and whiff of wood smoke as we head home after a day of hunting.

If you can gather around a table with family and friends, you are not poor. If you can still walk the land of your childhood, you are not poor. If neighbors show up to offer a helping hand, you are not poor. If the houses in your town are named after families who lived in them, you are not poor. If your town has a volunteer fire department, you are not poor. And, someday, if you are lucky enough to die in your own bed, surrounded by family, you are not poor.

Thanksgiving is the day to celebrate our inner wealth, since we have a seat at the table. Emily Dickinson wrote about the hunger of loneliness, looking from the outside in:

I had been hungry, all the Years—
My Noon had Come—to dine—
I trembling drew the Table near—
And touched the Curious Wine—
...I looked in Windows, for the Wealth
I could not hope—for Mine—
I did not know the ample Bread—
'Twas so unlike the Crumb
The Birds and I, had often shared
In Nature's—Dining Room—
...Nor was I hungry—so I found
That Hunger—was a way
Of Persons outside Windows—
The Entering—takes away—

Warm regards,

Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball is founder of Milk Street, which produces Milk Street Magazine, Milk Street Television on PBS, and the weekly public radio show Milk Street Radio. He founded Cook’s Magazine in 1980 and was host and executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen until 2016. Kimball is the author of several books, including "The Yellow Farmhouse" and "Fannie’s Last Supper."