Pivot
Dear Dungarees,
So we go out and buy a farm. Toss some goats a llama and seeds in for good measure, a year-round greenhouse, and some acreage. And then, get this...
I. KNOW. NOTHING! Nothing! The idea of holistic regenerative farming and animal husbandry blows my mind. Just incredible. Why did I never learn all the farmy things?! What have I done with my life these last 44 years?! I AM SO THANKFUL we can pivot and learn new things even on the back 40.
Building a life on a farm with no historical knowledge of any part of farm life is bulky work. Farmy things are exhausting. And there is no feedback like “You’re planting too late or too early” or “Winter rye doesn’t do so great in this soil” or “It’s time to copper and deworm the goats” or “You actually have to water the plants if you want them to grow” Mmmmm…that last one was maybe spoken this week.
Working outside the farm to pay the bills, raising children, keeping animals, and repairing broken and old things are all part of our lives on the farm. There is no single book or podcast that contains all the knowledge we need to gain. Despite the vast amount of information available, it feels like there are millions of unspoken rules, playlists, and proverbs about farming tucked neatly in a warehouse just beyond our grasp. We are just grabbing at fragments in the dark in an effort to gain knowledge. It doesn’t feel like enough. Simultaneously we are patching broken things with proverbial band-aids attempting to balance what needs to be fixed immediately with what can wait.
We discovered that our pasture fields are infested with cheatgrass. What’s that you say? Oh, nothing much. It’s just the very worst freeloading destructive expletive weed grass on this earth. It maims the feet and mouths of animals that get its sprouted stalk heads in. It devours healthy pastures like a lion devours its prey. And it makes me feel powerless. There are 2 chosen methods of removal and neither guarantees destruction. The first is chemical spray, and the second is removing the stalks BY HAND. 5 acres of hand-removing cheatgrass? Blerg. Spraying poses significant challenges as our animals use the pastures. So we call a guy. It will cost X amount of dollars to spray XYZ chemical on it, but it can't be done until the end of the fall and we have to do it in sections because of the animals. Oh yeah, and it will take 6 years to eradicate. S-I-X-Y-E-A-R-S.
Now we MUST learn about crop rotation and figure out how to afford the extra fencing and gate materials to close off certain pastures to our animals. Should we buy a four-wheeler sprayer and become licensed in spraying chemicals in order to save money or should we keep calling the spray guy forever? (Why did I think an organic farm was possible?) Oh, and the gates that we need 6 of to close off pastures are $1400 a piece. If I'm being honest, it gets overwhelming. I really wanted chemical-free pastures. I also really wanted to be a world-famous circus clown by now but here we are.
Cheers to all you oldies learning new things. Maybe it’s stepping out of your comfort zone and taking a cooking class, maybe it’s picking up a new hobby and learning how to do sick BMX tricks (on my bucket list) or maybe you’re just downsizing and enjoying the freedom of less stuff. Or maybe like us, you have flipped your world upside down and need to learn an entirely new set of life skills. These words are for you. I see you. We’re gonna be ok and the world will be better because we are still learning. May we never ever stop.
Yes and Amen.
I’ve never identified with a statement more. 💖
