OK more like lattes. It just hit me one morning, bundled up in the 10-degree winter air, milking the cows as usual, the glass warming my fingers as it filled with milk. I needed more coffee.
You see, when you milk a cow by hand, a layer of foam builds as the jar fills. And the milk is warm. I have no idea what took me so long to make this connection, but I was completely amused that all over the world there are thousands and thousands of people using an relatively complex (and expensive) machine requiring electricity and water to essentially return huge quantities of milk (that has already been heated and cooled using complex equipment to pasteurize it, and then processed again to homogenize it) back to it's original state: warm and foamy. Yes, I realize it is not practical to keep a cow in the back of every coffee shop, nor could she produce enough milk to keep up with the demand, but the whole system is amusingly backwards none the less. But mostly, it made me wonder who made the first cappuccino and how, and what made the espresso machine inventor's light bulb turn on. How had I never wondered about this before, even after being a barista for four years? Weird. Maybe it was common practice to add fresh warm raw milk to coffee in the morning, and maybe in France the farmer's children would want some coffee with their warm milk in the morning, to be like their parents, and the café au lait was invented. And the foam just happened to be there, and came to be commonplace. And then one day a young man who grew up on a farm moved to the city and missed having his coffee with warm milk and foam so much that he decided to invent a machine that could reproduce it for him whenever he wanted. Yep. Pretty sure that's how it went down.

Anyway, I was inspired to make my own old-fashioned cappuccino. We already had a stovetop espresso maker that I'd been using regularly. The foam was a little bubbly, and it quickly turned into an iced latte, but it was pretty amazing, in my humble opinion.

I write this all from an adorable cafe in Evanston, Illinois, where I've been starting my days since I've been back in the Chicago area. Yes, I have left the farm. And I haven't written anything in two months - not for lack of content, just motivation and energy. It was surprisingly emotional flying out of New Mexico - I became very attached to the land, the place itself, and the animals. By the time I left, our time was mostly consumed with feeding the animals, milking three cows a day and making cheese with the milk. Several prospective workers came and left. My sister visited. Two snow storms trapped us on the mesa for a couple days. My body is still stiff and sore, but I am completely energized and ready to begin the next adventure, soon heading back to Seattle. I wonder what awaits me there...