Celebrating Milestones: A Farm-To-Table Experience

 

Jill celebrated a significant birthday in September. (I'll let you ask her which it was.) She chose a birthday meal at Saltwell Farm Kitchen, rural Overbrook. The route took us up and down hills and over dirt roads to a beautiful farm setting nestled among mature trees. 

This particular celebration was an adults-only gathering. She and Eric invited Randy and me, as well as Brent and Susan. They didn't figure the girls would appreciate the six-course tasting menu and the leisurely 3-hour supper.

But the rest of us certainly did.

Saltwell is named for the salty wells built on the original 1856 McKinzie Farmstead, Saltwell Farm Kitchen is 20 minutes west of Lawrence and 20 minutes east of Topeka, nestled in a grove of walnut trees and native Kansas prairie land, just around the bend from Clinton Lake Beach Park. Advance reservations are required.

 

They serve 50 guests per dinner seating each Friday and Saturday night. 

 

The tables are far enough away that you don't hear other diners' conversations. Each table is set with vintage linens and mix-and-match vintage china. 

 

During the months of May through early October, guests dine outdoors near the Potting Shed bar and culinary gardens. 

From mid October through the end of April, guests dine inside the old farmhouse around the antique wood-burning stove in a candle-lit dining room and bar.

 

Inside or outside, diners can add signature cocktails and mocktails to their evening for an additional charge.

The Saltwell Experience is a farm-to-table menu inspired by the seasons, local ingredients, neighboring farmers, and foraged foods.

 

We got there in plenty of time to walk around the grounds and enjoy the beautiful evening.

 

 

 

 

We entered through a vine-covered arch into the seating area.

  

 Waiters delivered each course with an explanation. 

Our first course was focaccia boule, flavored with aged cheddar and poblano, served with cream cheese Saltwell honeybee butter. Yum!

Course two was Crimson rosado gazpacho with coriander queso fresco and sumac tajin. The gazpacho included watermelon, cucumbers and tomatoes. It wasn't the favorite course for anyone at our table, but it was still fun to sample something we'd only heard about on Food Network. 

Third course was Goddess Roots - fresh herbs and tender greens with feral Green Goddess dressing and crispy cassava root. (It was definitely not like Green Goddess dressing from the bottle!)

 Fourth course was called Southside Southpaw - a Chicago-style hot beef arepa, a type of flatbread corn "pancake."

Beef was on the main course menu - a black pepper rosemary sirloin, served with smoked potato salad and garden succotash.

And the sixth and final course did not disappoint. It was Dubai Choco-Taco - a Dubai chocolate cannoli with dark chocolate whisked ricotta, pistachio phyllo stuffing and a pistachio whipped topping.

 (The photos probably don't do the food justice, but as it got darker, it was harder to capture good photographs.) 

 But the atmosphere was even better as the sun went down with the fire pit and the lights strung above the tables.

  

 

It's not every day that you eat food prepared by a James Beard-nominated chef - Rozz Petrozz. It is expensive, but it was a memorable experience to celebrate a special occasion. 

 

LIFE LATELY 

I've posted on Facebook, but the rest of this post is for me. We had a wonderful September, following Kinley's 8th grade tennis season. We definitely "kept the road hot" as I tell my friends, driving back and forth to Topeka to catch the action. And we wouldn't trade a minute of it.

 

Kinley had quite the fan club at some of her games. Our fellow grandparents - Alan and Christy - helped cheer her on. At another, Uncle Brent and Susan caught the action (though I missed a photo). 

The trip was a little shorter the day we went to Wichita Collegiate for tennis!  

 

At her season finale, she won 5-0 and took home the first-place medal in No. 1 singles!  

 

She started playing tennis at Genesis several years ago, and all her hard work certainly paid off. 

Her little sister has not yet made a total commitment to tennis. She's still playing the field - so to speak - with volleyball, basketball and softball. She says she's thinking about cross country when she gets to junior high competitions. So, time will tell.

But at one of our trips to Topeka for Kinley's tennis, we got to watch Brooke at her tennis lesson. So we'll see ...

However, she has totally committed to being a bookaholic, like her grandma. 

She did watch her sister play tennis. But she also read during others' matches.

I tell her - and her parents - that I'm happy to feed that habit. Jill asked if we could be to Topeka soon enough to take Brooke to Barnes and Noble so she could spend her birthday gift card. How fast could I type, "Sure!" (Pretty fast!)

I've supplemented the public library a couple of times in the last month. Once, the book Brooke wanted wasn't in their collection. The other time, she had been "waiting and waiting" for The Hunger Games. Grandma ended up buying it before she left town. (And Brooke finished it in a day!) 

 

We book addicts have to stick together.

It's always fun to have family with us at K-State football games.  

Kinley wasn't there, but Jill, Eric and Brooke joined us for the UCF game September 27.
 

We even got a win!

 Let's hope for a repeat this weekend. It's homecoming vs. TCU.

 

Lasting Message

Sunrise, October 1, 2025, over a hay field.

I finished a book last night. That is not unusual. But this book - Theo of Golden - will likely stay with me for quite some time.

I had seen glowing posts about the book on some Facebook book groups. The cover didn't immediately grab my attention. We've talked about the power of book covers at the Recently Read Book Club I attend monthly at my Stafford hometown library, the Nora E. Larabee Memorial Library. What is it that grabs our attention and makes us want to crack the book spine? 

Still, while not overly enthused by the cover, I did check with the Hutchinson Public Library, but it wasn't in their collection. 

However, I stumbled across it as I helped arrange books for our church's Oktoberfest book sale this coming Friday and Saturday. I immediately paid my 50 cents and took it home. 

I was surprised to discover it was self-published. Books that get their start that way rarely find much success. But, as I wiped tears from my eyes and closed the book last night, I understood why it defied the odds. (And, for the record, that wasn't the first time I'd had tears as I read this beautifully-written book with a timely message.) 

Here's a synopsis:  

Theo of Golden is the endearing story of a curious old man who quietly moves into a southern city and, for reasons unknown to anyone but himself, undertakes a campaign of anonymous generosity. Theo’s love for people, combined with his fondness for books, art, birds, and story, unite in a colorful expression of outreach and affection. Stories are shared, friendships are born, and lives, in response to his inexplicable kindness, are affirmed and transformed. The old man, no stranger to sadness and loss, quickly becomes a welcome presence in the community but his new friends and neighbors wonder, who is Theo? And why is he here? Theo of Golden is a beautifully crafted story about the power of creative generosity, the importance of wonder to a purposeful life and the far-reaching possibilities of anonymous kindness.

This morning, I woke up to news of a government shutdown ... more political finger pointing ... a caravan that brought a police officer killed in duty back home to rural Kansas ... more gun violence overnight ... and I despaired. But, as I walked by the window, I saw color in the sky and figured it was better for my mental health to drive down the road to watch the sunrise, rather than watch more of the newscast. 

Milo field sunrise panorama, October 1, 2025

I was probably a few minutes later than I should have been, but it was well worth the effort. And it again reminded me of the book. Besides Theo's generosity to his new neighbors, he was attuned to the natural world around him - the birds, the flowers, the trees, the sunset and even feathers.

Ironically, not long before I started reading the book - which features a single feather on its cover - I saw this blue feather lying in the grass as I got into the car to leave. And I couldn't resist taking a photo. Honestly, at the time, I was thinking about how I might be able to use the photo to illustrate the Emily Dickinson quote:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

In the book, Theo meets new people at a bench by a fountain. At another bench near the river, he sits under a tree and watches at 7 o'clock each evening as the sun goes down. Maybe that thought about Dickinson's "hope" wasn't all that far off from Theo's philosophy of life either. 

Theo's bench - From the author's website

At one point of the book, Theo talks to one of his new friends about "good art." But his answer turns out to be about much more than just "art." It's about life.

It might not make a of of sense, but for anything to be good, truly good, there must be love in it. I'm not even sure I know fully what that means, but the older I get, the more I believe it. There must be love for the gift itself, love for the subject being depicted or the story being told and love for the audience. Whether the art is sculpture, farming, teaching, lawmaking, medicine, music or raising a child, if love is not in it - at the very heart of it - it might be skillful, marketable, or popular, but I doubt it is truly good. Nothing is what it's supposed to be if love is not at the core.

From Theo of Golden by Allen Levi 

For me, messages that I'm supposed to "get" often arrive unbidden from multiple directions. This morning after my return from the sunrise chase, I opened an email devotional from The Upper Room and again read the words of the Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And where there is sadness, joy. 

Sometimes, it's hard to battle my way through those darker emotions - the hatred, the injury, the doubt, despair, darkness and sadness. But maybe we can find it as we pay attention to the small things around us. I spent some time this morning on the author's website, and read several of his essays, including "Taking the time to see" and "Learning Small Things Matter is Really No Small Thing." Those are themes I often talk about here at my little spot on the internet. 

 

And, thankfully, in the midst of all the other stuff, there's plenty of small "miracles" to open our eyes to see ... 

We've just experienced the Monarch butterflies' annual migration through our area.   

  

Even the search for butterflies can remind us that it may take some time and effort. I had trouble capturing photos of butterflies at rest. Most were flitting around high in the trees. But persistence paid off - a few times, at least.

 

The butterflies also share a message of perseverance and triumphing over obstacles as they make their way from northern climes to their wintering grounds in Mexico. 

 

But even through the rough days, we just have to look for the Light ...

 ... and the beauty around us.  

 

And give thanks - even when it's hard.

If you have read Theo of Golden or if  you read it in the future, I'd love to hear what you think.