Jim’s Sage Pasta with Summer Tomatoes
Jim McGovern has called Virginia home his entire life. He lives in McLean with his wife, Pat; two cats, Luna and Pebble; many chickens; and even more honeybees. Once a longtime expert in the tech industry, Jim now runs his own business recycling used electronics — giving forgotten materials a second life, protecting the earth in a new way.
He is a man whose life hums with a steady rhythm rather than hurry — a rhythm of building, growing, tinkering, and creating. A man of patience and industrious curiosity, he has built marvels around his home by hand — even the family’s dining table.
Jim is also an avid hockey player, playing on four teams!
On weekends, you’ll find him at the farmers’ market with Pat and Basil, eating crepes or a smoked bluefish empanada before walking home to feed the chickens.
On Time, Tinkering, and Letting Things Grow
“My mom was always growing lots of plants,” Jim says. “And my sister — she’s actually a horticulturist. We just slowly got more and more into it… I don’t really have a green thumb like my wife or my mom or my sister, but I like to build things. I like being surrounded by plants.”
He tells me that most of what surrounds their home — the raised garden beds, the chicken coops, the deck where the cats nap in the sun — came together over time. Not from a master plan, but from patience and curiosity.
“At first, you’re nervous, like, ‘What’s it going to be like having chickens?’ But then you just do it. You try. Some things work, some don’t. You just have to start.”
Jim doesn’t aim for him to be a perfect and still place. He treats it more like a living experiment — imperfect, alive, constantly changing. He laughs when I ask if it’s all carefully organized.
“It might seem that way,” he says, “but we never feel like we have enough time to make it really efficient. It just kind of… grew like this.”
He admits that time is always what he wishes for more of.
“If I didn’t have a job, I’d spend all my time out here. I’d make it more efficient, grow more, see how far we could go toward living sustainably. I think that’d be a fun kind of retirement — to see how little we need to buy, how much we can make ourselves.”
When I ask him if he ever feels frustrated by the messiness of life — the way nature, work, and family all demand different parts of him — he shakes his head.
“I don’t see it as a failure,” he says. “If it had to be perfect all the time, that would be terrible. I don’t need it that way. It’s okay that it’s messy. You can’t control everything — and I don’t try to.”
There’s a gentle freedom in his philosophy — an acceptance that growth, like a garden, is both deliberate and wild. That beauty is not in control, but in care.
🌱 Recipe Box: Sage Pasta with Summer Tomatoes
Ingredients (2 servings):
1 lb fresh pasta (tagliatelle or linguine
2 tbsp butter
10 fresh sage leaves
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
Salt and black pepper to taste
Grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions:
Cook pasta until al dente.
In a pan, melt butter and sauté sage until crisp.
Add garlic and tomatoes; cook 2–3 minutes until fragrant.
Toss in drained pasta, season, and top with cheese.
In Jim’s world, nothing is rushed to perfection— things are free to explore, grow, and change.
His hands build; his patience sustains. And somewhere between the laughs at the market and the clucking of chickens, life quietly finds its balance.