just do it.

While I always intended for this farm to provide for us, the question of whether or not it would ever provide an income was always a gray area. I thought it would be nice if our labors earned us a bit of pocket change, and to that end I started selling extra eggs just as soon as I had them to sell. But I didn't have any sort of grand vision beyond that. Nor was I certain what direction I might want to go. Honey? Cheese? Broilers and eggs? So many choices. I had to see what stuck, what felt natural to me, before I could hope to turn it into a business. Any business I wasn't 100% invested in emotionally would never fly. So I spent a solid year selling eggs to coworkers, trying out soap formulas, trying to grow nice vegetables, sharing homemade cheese with friends, doing research, raising broilers. Testing the waters.

It happened slowly and organically, as all good and proper things do. Every Saturday last summer I visited the farmers market in a neighboring town to pick up my CSA basket. I had become friends with Marilyn, my veggie grower (I always do this somehow) and had also gotten to know some of the other market vendors. The atmosphere at this particular market was better than most I'd seen - welcoming, laid back, cooperative - very much a farmer's farmers market. One day around mid-season, I decided I wanted in. This was the place for me. I became determined to get my affairs in order, get some product, and be there on opening day the following season in my very own booth. I spread the word. I let everyone know that I was interested, partly to keep me on track, but also for the foothold. When you put your intentions out there, somehow people rally to your cause. If you have a dream and a plan, tell everyone - friends, relatives, others in your field, anyone you can - they'll be ahead of you clearing the track so that you can forge ahead unhindered. I have no idea why this works, I just know that it does, and it never fails to humble me.

And six months later, here I am - an entrepreneur. I have a tax permit. In the next couple of weeks, I'll have an assumed name certificate and a bank account. Equipment is being procured, a website is in the works, and product development continues. I'm not getting in over my head. I'm keeping my day job (for now). All I want to start with is for the farm to support itself. I'd like my farm sales to cover things like hay, feed and seed. Would I like it to pay some of the bills? Of course. But that can be saved for another day. I figure I'm doing all these things anyway - why not let them pay for themselves? If I can reach a point where not a single dime of my paycheck goes to farm expenses, I'll consider it a success.

There is one thing I know for certain, though. This is what I'm meant to do, at least right now. And it will work. Because...well, because it just will.

* The title of this post has become my mantra, and my most-often-repeated piece of advice. It couldn't be more heartfelt.

a night in the garden

I always love my country home, but there are times when it simply takes my breath away, and I'm deeply thankful that I get to be here. This evening is one.

We're enjoying a warm week in January, and the days have lengthened ever so slightly - the perfect combination of warmth and long light that makes me dream of springtime. I've taken advantage of a dinner already made and am spending the waning hour of daylight cleaning out my garden beds, in preparation for upcoming planting. I turn over big fistfuls of dark soil, marveling at the thriving earthworm population. I get a chuckle from the jostling and squawking of the hens putting themselves to bed - endless shuffling and shifting, punctuated by sudden outbursts, like children in their bunks at camp after lights-out.

I turn over soil until it is nearly dark and I can barely see. I can hardly make out the distinction between the black dirt and the smoke sky, the slate grass beneath my feet. The goats in the barn are silent, surrendered to their caprine dreams. A dog in the distance calls out to anyone who'll answer. Everything is quiet and still, and vibrantly alive. The air is cool and moist, faint lightning casts an orange glow on clouds too far away to matter, and everything smells of earth.

my four-wheeled farm hand

I started the new year with a new tool. I have long coveted a garden cart, and when I saw this one, well, I went weak in the knees. It's proper. A huge portion of my day is spent hauling things from one place to another, and the distances I haul them are too short to justify using the truck, but just a wee bit too long to do by hand without wearing myself out. This is the perfect solution. I'm technically still moving things by hand, and therefore not burning fuel of any kind, but it's much easier on me. It can go anywhere that I can go on foot. It's just the right size for a large square bale, all four sides drop down for easier loading and unloading, it makes amazingly tight turns and the big tires handle our rutted, uneven terrain with aplomb. I've only had it for forty-eight hours and already I've used it to move three loads of trash, firewood and sacks of feed. I don't get wound up over stuff too often, but really, I just can't say enough how much I am in love with this thing. I heart the cart!

seeing my way to the end

The holidays always bring a flurry of activity around here. In addition to the usual cooking, decorating and gifting that everyone does this time of year, we also find ourselves prepping the farm for winter. We're laying in firewood, fortifying the animal shelters, stocking up on hay and straw, putting the garden to bed. We've been at it for a good six or eight weeks now, trying to get things zipped up for the year.

We probably don't need to do this. Our winter "down time" really only lasts for about six or eight weeks. But here's the thing - we like the down time. We need it, really. It would be easy in a place like this to just plug along all year and never take a break. But the holidays wear us out a bit, and we know that come mid-February the real work will start, so we relish the dark days when we can hole up in the house to plot and plan.

I'm not done with Christmas yet. I'm close - I can taste victory - and the tasks I have left are all ones I enjoy. I have a bit of cooking, a bit of crafting, quite a bit of wrapping (I love wrapping) and I'm there. I'm on the home stretch. I can see those dark days of January in my sights. I'll finish up in the next couple of days, and spend the last week before Christmas just being. I'll drink hot chocolate and watch movies. I'll nap with my dogs. I'll browse the pages of seed and poultry catalogs with big dreams. We'll spend Christmas with the family eating pate and sausage balls and cookies. We'll drink too much wine and play charades. We'll build a bonfire and talk to distant relatives on the phone. The week after Christmas will be more of the same. We'll drink champagne on New Year's Eve in our pj's, watch James Bond films and eat brisket for days. And when we rouse ourselves from our party-heads, the dark days - the down time - will be upon us. We'll sit together with notepads and pens on the sofa (still in our pj's) and plot the next step of our takeover - our farm domination. We'll be the overlords of this place. We'll decide who stays, who goes and who gets hired, what gets built and what gets torn down. We'll look across our property with grand designs in our heads and make plans.

At least until mid-February, when the shackles go back on.

going for broke

I now have a thorough understanding of the expression "make hay while the sun shines". We've been hit hard by rain for so many weeks that it has crippled any effort we might have made in the name of progress. So when the sky cleared and the forecast called for sun all week long (!) it became an all-out push to get as much done as humanly possible.

We got the concrete poured (finally) for the chicken coop we're building. Now we can actually start the construction in earnest. I made a huge trip to the feed store, and got stocked up on everything. We cleaned a pickup-load of trash out of the barn and hung new fly traps (the previous ones filled up in a matter of DAYS - we have mega-flies). I gathered dry kindling and installed solar outdoor lights around the barn and yard. I planted more veggies in the garden and we set up a makeshift greenhouse in the hopes of getting a little more out of our tomatoes and peppers. I mucked all the wet straw and hay out of the goat barn and put down dry. The goats had to spend the better part of the day shut out in the yard while I did it, but since they've been holed up inside the barn for weeks, I don't think they minded too much. They even played with that dog. That's how happy they were to be outside.

And then there were other things. Some things the rain forced us to do - having all the water pumped out of our septic tank, for instance. Other things the rain is still preventing me from doing. I have winter rye to plant, but the ground is still too wet to till. I only hope it will stay dry long enough for me to get that seed in the ground. There was even a little time to do some indoor things as well. I planned meals for the next couple of weeks, ordered my honeybees for spring and got my birthday present set up for use - a Country Living grain mill to grind my own fresh flour for baking.

And even after all the work, in honor of Halloween, we spent our evenings watching a long string of scary movies, with a bowl full of popcorn and a jack-o-lantern providing our only light.

This may have been the most satisfying weekend ever. There's something wonderful about checking loads of things off your to do list in a short time, and without exhausting yourself. It makes you feel unstoppable.

kitchen window on a dreary day

good morning

The Farm After One Year

Holy smokes, it's been a year since we moved to the farm. A bit more, actually. I was thinking yesterday while hanging laundry (I do a lot of good thinking then) about what we've been through, how much has changed for us and what we have on the horizon for the coming year.

I'll be honest, our first year was hard. We really went full-throttle. We plowed forward through a swirling haze of excess enthusiasm, self-imposed deadlines, enabling co-conspirators, emergency repairs and do-or-die home improvements. We lived through the hottest, most miserable summer with essentially no air conditioning, and spent most of a cold, wet, windy winter with essentially no heat. Did I say "windy"? We learned that the wind blows steadily at about 30 mph from November to April. We learned that doing farm work in 30 mph sustained winds inspires foul language. Doing farm work in 30 mph sustained winds when it is ALSO COLD is positively soul-crushing. And I can't tell you how many times I've collected laundry from all over the yard after it was blown off the line.

All of that is balanced by the good, though. We've enjoyed cool evenings when folks in town were still cursing the heat, wildflowers in virtually every season of the year, and moons so large you can't help but stare, transfixed. Listening to coyotes singing in the nearby trees while the setting sun lights the pond on fire is unearthly. Watching a Blue Heron come in for a slow landing will take your breath away.

When we first moved to the place, it was wild. There were feral dogs running the property, the grass and brush were practically impassable and mud daubers were squatting all over the inside of the house. We found shed snake skins in the closet. It was a mess. Now, a year later, it's still a mess, but it is comfortably lived in. We have reclaimed a good portion of it and made it ours. The small barn that once was piled high with junk now houses actual animals. This time last year, we had thirteen chickens - today, we have something like sixty. Or eighty. I've actually lost count. Fourteen chicks and thirteen ducklings were hatched on our farm, and it was amazing every time. We've lost birds, too - enough now that it makes us annoyed rather than sad. We've put up fencing and more fencing. We've moved the same lumber pile two or three times. We planted a garden, harvested, moved it and planted it again. We've been slaves to the milking schedule. Two new dogs joined our little family and one left it, having done everything she could for us. We have gone to great lengths to protect our animals' lives so that we may later kill them for our own meat. We have wrestled with the irony of this. What a year.

I must be honest again - looking ahead, I fully expect the second year to be hard as well. It will be different, though, and I'm filled with hope and eager anticipation as we start the next leg of this journey. It was exhausting to do so much right away, but at the same time, we feel better knowing that those things are now behind us. We will be no less busy, but our projects now will be mostly chosen, and will hopefully provide more for our comfort than our survival. We rest more easily, though, knowing that if it does become a question of our survival, we can handle that too.

Last night at dinner we were discussing how different our life is now. If we still lived in town, we'd be sitting on the sofa watching TV all the time, wondering what to do with ourselves, and cursing the lousy traffic on the way home from work. We traded all that for lots of hard labor, tons of chores, acres of mowing, long commutes, no social life. We also traded all that for quiet, for letting the grass get as tall as we want, for goats that wag their tails when they see us and for chats with Very Old Men at the feed store about the weather. Would we go back? No way.


P. S. It would be unfair of me not to point out that this endeavor has belonged to my husband as much as to me. When I asked him to share his thoughts and experiences for this post, he simply stated the following:

"I'll deal with snakes, raccoons and coyotes the rest of my life before letting an HOA meddle in my business."

Bless him.

that thing they call "autumn"

I'm no longer convinced that Autumn really exists. Oh sure, as a child I recall red and orange leaves, apple cider, crisp mornings, chilly evenings, pumpkins, frost. I've begun to suspect, however, that these were pleasant lies manufactured by my parents to make me more willing to go back to school...to change out of the carefree skin of summer and fall in line. (Maybe that's why it's called "Fall"?) Here in the land of Summer, Autumn seems akin to Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Or even like winning the lottery or being asked out by the best looking boy in school. It is something that Other People get to enjoy.

But lately I cannot deny that I'm seeing the signs. My faith is returning. Every day Summer takes another step closer to the door. In another couple of weeks, she'll leave. Then of course, she'll have forgotten her keys or some such thing and come storming back in briefly before finally splitting for good. She may even forget her purse too, and have to come back a couple of times - you know how that can happen. This morning at ten after six, I noticed that it was unusually dark for ten after six. When I stepped outside, it was, dare I say, brisk. It was a mere 62 degrees - downright chilly for us here. I think there may be hope for us yet.

Now if you don't mind, I need to get out and work on the garden for as long as I can before it's 90 degrees. I probably have until, oh, mid-morning.

farm life is...part II

When the surface of your desk is home to any or all of the following items:

loose bean seeds
livestock dewormer
a goat collar
an egg
wads of bailing wire

farm life is...

Finding alfalfa twigs in your hair brush.

welcome to our place

It's quiet around here...

I'm alone on the farm this week.

That sounds ridiculous to say, considering that I am in the company of four dogs, four goats, three rabbits, five ducks, innumerable chickens and one crabby cat. But I am the only biped. The only one here with thumbs. I was a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to handle things. I was afraid that something would go wrong and I wouldn't be able to fix it, but so far that hasn't occurred. I imagine that given enough time, something eventually would go wrong, but fears about being by myself for just a week seem now to have been overblown. I have made it halfway through the week without any need for a tool, a bullet or a phone call, and that feels like a small triumph to me.

P.S. Sorry for the lack of pictures lately. It's literally too hot to stand outside for any non-essential reason, and frankly there's nothing inside worth taking photos of.

P.P.S. Rabbits really hate it when you soak them with the hose.