For the Love of a New Farm Table (and Why It Matters)

Last week, the four of us worked together to build a new farm table for our dining room. It was a dream four years in the making.

When we moved to Tennessee, we didn’t know where we were going to end up, and we had to get rid of a lot of belongings like our beloved, weathered farm table which was so heavy, it had to be disassembled to even be moved. Hand-built by Steven at night after he worked long hours at our own business during the day, that 8-ft table held the memories of our nine years living in our Dallas home together. We gave it to our close friends, Tommy and Linda, who came over and took it home in pieces. They had joined us around it countless times; we knew they would appreciate it and use it to nourish others. 

I can still remember every knot and divot in that table and imagine where I was sitting in different pivotal moments. Toddler Luci Belle would crawl underneath it and stick her chubby little finger through a knot hole while I was drinking morning tea.

After we moved, and before we found our farmland, we rented a small home in the country so we could transition to our new life in Tennessee. Out of the blue, my dear college friend, Angela, asked, “Hey, any chance you need a wooden table for six? My office is getting rid of it.” I scurried over to her office faster than you could imagine and loaded it into the back of our Tahoe.

That sweet little table has been the centerpiece of our dining room for the last four years, just enough for our family and a few guests. It’s now etched with remnants of crafts, school days, and many meals with each other and friends. It’s served us well, but I always knew it would be temporary ~ I just didn’t know “temporary” would be four years! My idea was to move it into the school room to give us more work and craft space and to build ourselves a new farm table for the dining room that would stand the test of time, years and countless more meals and memories.

Last week, we did it!

For three days, we hammered, drilled, sanded, painted. After the last layer of clear topcoat had dried, and we did a final once-over, all four of us signed our names underneath the boards in Sharpie, permanently inscribing the story of how it was built.

There are so many imperfections and textures that give it character: a board that’s slightly sloped, small gaps between boards where game pieces could get stuck, and a triangle piece missing at one end where you could, conveniently, scrape all the crumbs to the floor when no one’s looking.

There’s even a knot that has a little heart in the middle. Because, of course.

We moved it into the dining room, arms trembling from trying to steadily hold the 100+ lbs of solid wood. It barely fit through the doorways of our house, and we had to move the couch out of the way in the living room to swing it wide enough to get it into the dining room. Our girls were scattering left and right, trying to move things out of the way so we had a clear path.

And then, we set it down, right under the one window that looks out onto the side yard with the Loblolly pine trees, the Forest of Fun, and Fairy Creek.

It fit absolutely perfectly.

This is apparently Norah’s 2020 smile pose.

In an instant, it seemed like it had always been there. I was absolutely giddy, jumping up and down like a 5-year-old and hugging my incredible husband, who set aside all the other seemingly bigger priorities in our lives for the last few days to hand-craft this piece of beauty, because he knows these things matter.

And it does matter. The table matters. Not what kind of table but that there is a physical, grounding piece of furniture that unites us in our humanity. Around it, we meet our needs for connection and sustenance. Around it, we are anchored through seasons of transition and hopefully create safe, stable spaces for others.

The table is where we gather, where we come to sacred, common ground, where we laugh around board games, scoot in extra chairs to welcome guests. It’s where all the little elements of our daily, beautifully ordinary lives are scattered: colored pencils, random drinking glasses (always way more than there are people in the house), drawings, notebooks, walkie talkies, puzzle pieces.

There’s something special that this new table that speaks of our backstory together - the family culture we built together in another home in another state - while also telling our new story as a family in Tennessee.

And not only does it hold 8-10 people now comfortably, but we before even sat around it, it already had a story:

The boards were salvaged from the inside of our barn.

The frame was made from leftover wood our friends gave us from their newly built house.

The legs were cut from posts we used to string lights at our Kindred Farm dinners.

And the white paint for the legs came from a can of paint we were saving in our basement for a bunkbed project that never was.

We didn’t need this new table. We haven’t waited for the “perfect” table to invite people into our normal, messy lives the last four years. Because no one really cares if a table is brand new, fancy, or a scratched, sticky hand-me-down - they just want to be welcomed in.