the idyllic and the messy

​Everyone’s life looks much different than it did a month or so ago.
Instead of rushing our kids out the door with hugs, backpacks, and wishes for a great day, we all ride out to the farm together.  I pop up a tent for shade and lay out a quilt underneath on the soft, green grass near where I plan to work for the day.

After a few worksheets, a snack, and a game, Maxwell and Flora will wander over to me and ‘help’ with a farm job for a while.  Some days this will lead to them wandering around the garden, playing in the soil, digging deep into their imaginations, or regaling the staff with their stories.  Other days they begin asking to go home early.

I am not accomplishing as much as I usually would, or as much as I would like to, but on Saturdays and Sundays I wake up before anyone else, pour a thermos full of coffee, and sneak off to the farm alone.  It has been years since I have been able to enjoy sunrise in the garden.  It is completely quiet, except for the bird song.  The day is full of promise.

​I would be remiss to leave you with that idyllic image of farming, which if I were to read would leave me screaming at my computer screen “That is not what it is like!”  The truth is, some days are perfectly pastoral and others are a mess.

On the morning of our scheduled first CSA harvest of the season, we awoke to a flooded farm road and the river on the rise after over 5 ½ inches of rain fell overnight.  Strong winds left trees down across the road and the power out at our packing shed, meaning we had no access to water and no refrigeration.  Hail had torn through tender salad leaves leaving them looking battered.
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Everything will not be perfect this year, it never is.  We will do our best and we will all likely eat very well this year, but there will be a bad strawberry in the batch one day, a squashed tomato, some beetle bites out of a bunch of greens.  There will be ups and downs.  There will be beauty and frustration in each day. ​

​For now, I will simply say how tremendously thankful we are to those of you trusting us to be your farmers!