A New Start?

So I am applying to graduate school at the College of St. Rose. This is the only local college to offer a Masters in Science in Early Childhood. Pieces of the puzzle are starting to march into order, but as always with life, it seems sometimes random and vague. I wrote a statement of purpose today in about 10 minutes. It sounds like an idealistic English major wrote it, but damn, that is really who I am. I am sick of learning about homesteading without the prospects of teaching someone. I am tired of growing food for people who think they deserve it cheap. I would rather give my food away and spend my day with children then stand in the hot sun begging for a customer to pay me a decent price for a bunch of scallions. This in no way means that homesteading and farming aren't still my main interests. I'm a back-to-the-land fool. It is just the realization that it seemed about impossible to make a living wage on a very small farm. For those of you doing it successfully, I seriously congratulate and applaud you. For those of you thinking about trying to go from garden to market garden, I would not hesitate to ask you to make sure you are independently wealthy or at least debt free first. A lot depends on your community. Mine is sort of at saturation. I still long for an Allis Chalmers G and a BCS tiller, and I still spent more than $300 on seeds and plants already, but I think I had better get my ass back in school and out from under this mortgage before I go broke. I hope they let me in and for the sake of humanity I hope these little children don't run screaming! I have a job interview at a local Head Start pre-school to be a teaching assistant, so that will be a quick way for me to figure out if that is really the age group I hope to teach. We'll see.

Purpose

So I've pushed on through the hedge between one part of my life and the next and it wasn't actually that hard. I realize that I am looking forward to planting more than I have in a while. I am creating a little wishlist of seeds and plants to get our homestead to the next level. We've been avoiding planting perennials until we bought the farm, so this will be the year for: 20 blueberry bushes, 50 purple passion asparagus crowns, 75 strawberry plants, 6-8 new trees including a hazelnut, some pawpaws, a mulberry and some no- spray apples. I am going to hunt for a gingko because I would like one to be a part of our legacy here. I plan to get my onions going in a week or so in my little hotbed in the tunnel. I am probably going to rig up a curtain and borrow my dad's little propane heater with a thermostat on it to heat just a small space. It will feel nice to take the drive to Vermont next week to pick up some Vermont Compost. I can't wait to prune the orchard in a week or so, now that I am more comfortable with it and I don't see too much fireblight like last time. We have a lot of work ahead, but it is the work of staying out of the grocery store and being more self-sufficient that I have always been drawn to. Maybe turning gardening and farming into my full-time job took away a lot of the joy in it. I don't mind being poor, as long as I am happy. But poor and miserable has to go. So here I am with a little flicker of joy in my heart again, without the resentment or the stress or the punishment of farming. I am free to come and go now, free to find a meaningful part-time job, free to go back to school and free to procure for myself a little paradise again. I solemnly state my goal of this year is to limit myself to only 25 visits to a grocery store... that's twice per month plus one holiday. That's a challenge worth undertaking with a little planning. So how will I winnow quinoa?

The farm roof is officially snow-free after last week's melt. The sun was so bright and strong and it got up to 60 degrees. I went out for a 4 mile run in a tank top and surveyed the block. There was a bit of spring in the air and I could feel the sap rising. After 5 yoga classes with a great teacher, I have really decided that my body IS in fact a temple, so I am going to start treating it like one again. It has carried me and my belongings 10,000 miles on foot. It has farmed for 5 years. It lifts and hoists and squats. I have officially visited a doctor for the first time in 5 years and found out that I am totally healthy, despite low vitamin D levels. I have really been paranoid about my health, so it was a relief to find out I am strong and well. We have all made it through the worst of the winter with flying colors.

This being the northeast and Chris and I becoming easily bored, we decided to tap 5 maple trees using some food safe buckets with lids that we drilled a hole through. So far, it seems to be working and we have collected about 4 gallons of sap. We've made an open-air sugar shack in the woods near a downed cherry and Chris and I cut and split a pile of wood and dragged an old woodstove down there. I shoveled all the snow on the forest floor into a pile next to the rootball of said downed cherry to sink a garbage pail to hold the sap and keep it from spoiling. Looks like we have some more cold days, but the end of this week it should be flowing well again. We hope to boil either this weekend or the next for our annual supply of maple syrup. It has been a few years since I have done this and I find it a great way to pull myself outside into the sun at the end of a long winter. Plus, it will be a good excuse to finally drink some of the hard cider I have been aging for 4 months now! I found my first little duck egg and my first little Aracauna egg today! The chickens are starting to lay better with all this light. It is a relief, since they had a rough winter as well.

Chris has been working on his wall project. We have temporarily run out of rocks, so we are in collection mode again. We plan to finish out the season with the woodstove fired up and then finish the project in the spring. So far, I think it looks beautiful and is a thing of beauty to stare at. I love watching him and our friend Jimmy work, deciding which rocks will go here or there. It is a strong wall that will hopefully see this house to her end. It will frame the stove and protect the wood. It will free up a window, which is currently being blocked by the stovepipe. It gives me a great chuckle to think of all of us hunched over dragging buckets of rocks to the dump-trailer. Now these rocks have purpose, and that is really what we all want, isn't it?

Avalanche!

Chris and I have been diligently shoveling roofs and chiseling away at our ice dams. We had almost 4 feet of compressed snow on all roof pitches with NO sliding until this week. We were scared out of our wits and bolted upright in bed to hear one of our major roof pitches (still made of slate) slide into the silent night. It rumbled the house. I heard forks resting on dishes downstairs tinkling. I damn near went downstairs to witness a hole in the roof or a collapsed porch. But Chris reminded me that this house has withstood 140 winters and winters much worse than this one, so we just went back to sleep and decided to inspect the damage in the morning.

To my surprise, after 3 pitches finally slid in the warmish afternoon sun the next day, there was no damage except the sewage vent pipe listing sideways under the weight of a giant glacial ice sheet that slid off the main kitchen. I went up the ladder with my chisel and shovel and cleared the roof. Now the pile of snow below that flat little roof stands about 8 feet high in the center. It is something to behold. The slide in the kitchen garden has made it all but impossible to open the garden gate. This house is tough and its foundations fat and those slates are holding on. The weight of snow upon this house must be tremendous.

I have been doing a lot of snowshoeing and soulsearching and have been tending to myself better than usual with lots of yoga and water and reading and drawing and knitting. I have 4 days to decide if I want to sign up for the Saratoga Farmer's Market again. I have made my decision and I know it is right for us for now. I will be taking a whole season off of farming and will covercrop the side and back fields. I will have a big garden and plan a summer hike if possible in Colorado to finish the San Juan loop and be there when my sister has her baby. I am searching for teaching jobs on the school calendar with young children, my favorite age. Chris and I are closer than ever to making a decision about inviting a baby into our lives. One way or the other, I need a more stable income and would like to try out teaching again before I go for a masters degree. It makes some sense. Being on a school calendar would be a great compromise for me in terms of living my life with some stability but still having summers to garden and hike and live. It is with a great deal of Catholic guilt that I have spent the winter unemployed now that I know I am not going to farm. And it is with deep regret and a lot of sadness that I feel I must turn away from farming. Realistically, I can't make a living farming an acre or two of veggies with so little infrastructure and no money to invest in a business. Now is not my time. If we hope to get another loan for the other lot, I will need a steady income that farming cannot promise.

So that's the plan. We will have a giant garden, tend the orchard, plant some new trees and ornamentals, and reconfigure our lives to try to save every penny so we can afford to be here and to stay here. The job market sucks in Saratoga, but I may find something at a Headstart program or at a daycare. I will keep looking until I find something. And I will keep my chin up. My mom says I didn't quit or give up, I just became wiser for trying something so hard. But it feels shocking to my system, like I have lost my identity and my community yet again. My problem is that I only like to try things that most people deem impossible. The odds are stacked against me here. The seed catalogs are unopened in a pile. I have plenty of seeds to make it through this season, in fact, enough to share with a lot of gardeners I know! I look forward to eating my best looking veggies instead of the seconds. And I look forward to the serenity and quiet of working in the garden alone again. All the knowledge I have gained will stay with me and maybe some day I can try again. Maybe by then, the grocery stores will be empty and people will be lined up by the thousands to get what little produce there is to be found at the farmer's market!

The "Organic" Industry

It is so hard to get through the long winter in the northeast without resorting to some familiar friends.... Mi-Del Ginger Snaps, Bearitos, Nature Valley granola bars, Kashi Cereal. Spring, summer and fall I find it easier to be sure that what I grow and buy at a farmer's market is purely local and will fill the pockets of my brethren. For those of us who think we are eating well by buying organic brand-name food from the local health food store, check this link out. I have followed these buyouts for a while, but it seems now that the entire industry is owned by the big bad wolves out there. I am trying to find a way to stay out of the grocery store. I try to go twice a month at most. But come on.... Coconut Bliss is just so good. So, spend the little money that I have on soymilk that is owned by???? That just sucks.

https://www.msu.edu/~howardp/organicindustry.html

How weird. The packaging is so alluring.... mountain streams and family farms and little dancing bears.

so white so cold

If I am going to go out with my faithful friend Stella, we needed to do something about her paws. Some say to spray Pam, but we got her some Granite Gear Booties instead. They fall off and are hard to hunt for in the snow, being now about 3 feet deep in places here, but they do seem to work at keeping her more comfortable for longer out there in the white stuff.