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Into the Wild
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The picture above was taken by one of my best childhood friends. It's our girls a few years ago, captured in a perfect moment of wild abandon, running through a small stretch of trees on the north side of our farm. To this day, it remains my favorite picture ever taken here at the farm, and believe me when I say, we've taken a lot of pictures in seven years time. It's one of my favorites because I don't remember the rest of the scene- how much work there was to do that day around the grounds, the endless lists, etc. etc. etc. The truth of 99% of all farms is that the entire picture is hardly glorious- or glamorous. Open up any garden or country home magazine, and that truth may come as a shock, even a disappointment, to some. Those beautiful magazines spreads take a little creative cropping- and more than a little elbow grease to put together. We've all been to those farms where you can see generations of farm equipment stranded about like some sort of mechanical graveyard, and piles of mulch, gravel, dirt, and sand like little mountain vistas in wherever the truck who brought said things decided to dump them. The reality is this is the truth of most farms. They are places of work first- and beauty second. My best advice to someone embarking upon a farming venture- You must become a person who sees the glass half full- not half empty. If you do not, you will surely drive yourself mad, and it will not take long to do so. If the photo shoot accompanied pictures of the inside of the house, and the family has children- they probably called in the guard to clean and removed the family for a few days. There is little time to pick up toys and clean toilets when there are hundreds of pounds of berries ripening on the vines and bushes outside. And they wait for no one. So the moral is, appreciate those beautiful shiny pictures, but don't hold your own place to those standards. It's not real.
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White beets from red seeds
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Your farm is a living breathing thing- and not much will go as planned. You will plant seeds nicely packaged or collected from your own plants, and you will get some surprises. It never fails. This was an oddity to me after so many years of neat and tidy hobby gardening. Watermelons will show up where you planted cantaloupes, red beets will have a few white ones (sometimes more than a few) just to keep you on your toes, and strange and wonderful things will hitch a ride when you move older plants from one spot to another. Let go of your expectation that everything should look like a checkerboard.
Nature knows no boundaries and will follow its own whims all the time- and every time. If you are an organic gardener, go right now and write this statement on the blackboard one hundred times- I'm speaking especially to you.
The last thing, and maybe the most important- your grocery store is a lie... just like the magazines. Food grown locally, and especially organically, doesn't look like your large chain produce center. You won't see fresh tomatoes in December, and you won't get big fat fresh peas in August. At least not by the usual means. Cucumbers will most not likely be 8 inches long and perfectly shaped like the Hindenburg blimp. They may be short and egg shaped. Carrots may surprise you with the oddest of shapes. We pulled two last week that looked like perfectly matched lovers entwined in the deep soil. It was incredibly cool and ushered more than a few "Awwww isn't that sweet" comments. Things like kohlrabi and beets will seem minuscule in size when best prepared. That's because as a farmer you learn these things are best eaten super early and bigger is not usually better in taste. In short, your grocer has to lure you by your eyes, and not your taste buds. You cannot eat before you buy in the grocery store. What you are staring at in the produce section is most likely a selection of vegetable Supermodels- hybridized and GMO'd for maximum visual pleasure.
Having said all this, having your own place to grow things and raise your own animals is unlike any adventure you will ever know. You will learn something new every day, and experience something new every day. There will be moments of beauty that literally take your breath- even when your to do list could keep you busy for the rest of the calendar year. You will never have it all done, and that realization will make you nuts for a while. One day you will learn to really appreciate the beauty of a perfectly weeded row of pepper plants, or stop in amazement when there are hundreds of larkspur in bloom that weren't in bloom yesterday. And your heart will be full. It will make you wonder how you ever lived any other way before this.
