As many of you know, I grew up on a farm, loathed living on a farm, left the farm, and in my midtwenties moved back to the same farm. I’ll spare all of us the “how I got here” details. I’ve documented them to an arguably unrivaled degree on TV and in cookbooks, but just know that today I still live on that farm.
But the farm is not what you may imagine. More like an ill-planned country subdivision than a bucolic homestead, Howardville, as I like to call it, consists of a patchwork of row crops, ponds, paths, and trees, acres cobbled together over five generations, a working farm on full tilt, a place that feels like a family member. Dotted among the agriculturebungalow draped in the branches of a pecan tree, nor a picket fence or grazing livestock. Instead, the handful of houses and yards that punctuate our eccentric homeplace look exactly like the people who built them. I don’t mean literally. My house doesn’t have brown hair and a noteworthy smile (although if you looked at its weathered cypress facade and shiny goldish roof a certain way, maybe it does?). I mean figuratively. In a feat of familial distinction, all the Howards took their corners of Howardville and Jackson Pollocked their personalities all over them.
