It's hard to know where to start when I sit down to write. A few months ago, a dear reader observed that there seemed to be a lot of bad things happening on the farm this year. So I backed off the wiritng. If you don't have anything nice to say, then you shouldn't say anything at all, right. Well, when you have seven out of eight goats die on you and a five week dry period, you spend your time trying to hold it together and then picking up the pieces. I'm not saying farm life is all hard work and doom and gloom, but sometimes, what you think of as news is not so good. I can say that I know what caused the goat die off. I also have a new perspective on irrigation. I've gotten to watch my daughter grow taller and stay pink. I seen my son get used to having jobs to do and learning how to trim horse feet with my husband. All those are great and good things, but when I sit down to write, I remember the individual goats, the struggle to get time to pull fence, the property line "discussion" the adjoining property owners keep bringing up and so on.
The truth is farming is a quite a bit of hard times punctuated by brilliant flashes of great moments. It IS work. It IS hard and it can be disappointing. But I love it. I would work whether it was at this or something else. And I love this. The quiet moments of picking or weeding. The intense joy of watching a small animal play. and so on. It can sound quite cliched and maybe it is. But perhaps that's because so many people have had a chance to experience this life either through their relatives, TV, books or whatever.
So stick with me. It may be hard but anything worth doing has a price. Besides, the stories may be interesting. I think this farm is absolutely necessary. More small farms are needed. We must concentrate on growing local food for our own survival. Tomatoes, anyone? How about spinach?
