December 30, 2016

I have slowed a bit and haven’t kept up with my blog as well as I used to.

Things have changed. Not for the worse or for the better, but just because they have.

Without the CSA, the fields are quiet, with knee high grass, browned by the sun and bent heavy with seed. There are no more tilled rows or raised beds. The strawberries are gone and so are the raspberries. The fences are rusted and loose from the posts. In places fences are dipped low where the deer jump it, and where the horses reach over to tear at Orchard grass that grows up against it. In more ways than it used to be, it is organic. The field is on its creative own, without my hands and implements to keep it organized. I no longer tell it what to grow.

The CSA ran its course. Maybe someday I will start a small version again. Going fallow had nothing to do with losing interest, but losing time. There just was not enough of it for me, Kath, or the persons who loyally volunteered. Our situations changed. And too, the market changed – farmer’s markets came to every town, aisles of “organic” food appeared in grocery stores, home delivery started, and people began to grow their own gardens and raise backyard chickens. A drive to the CSA seemed a wasted afternoon when other choices became easy. It seemed that farmers who once asked for support on the farm went into the towns and stores with tables and cellophane packaging, and became all they set out not to be. Once again, no one had to wash the dirt from their fingernails to feel good about their food. 

In a sense, we came full circle, but with more awareness of the difficulties.

That’s ok. I am not complaining. I have moved on. I can enjoy that many of my former customers now grow their own food, have chickens, and some have gone on to have their own small farms. I feel that all those who once worked this ground spread the right kind of change.  I’d like to think that during those few years when we were a CSA we all made a difference.

Now I mostly grow for myself and a few persons who ask for things. I still use my “hot house” for greens and vegetables, and this winter I am experimenting to see if garlic can be done under cover. I keep enough chickens to supply a few “customers”.  I keep two bee hives – not to save the earth, but because I like bees. I am smaller, and I find I am even more “green” now. I’m actually better.

And without the CSA, I spend more of my “spare” time with the horses, goats, chickens, and the nature here. I’ve had time to put together a book of poetry and continue learning photography. I have time to explore music and books. 

Where does all this leave the blog? We are still a farm, but not the same farm. And maybe that’s how I need to think of the blog- still my blog, but not the same blog. It too, needs to change. Not necessarily for the better, or for the worse, but because change is long over due.  With it, I hope to explore more and new things!

Good memories bring good tomorrows. I hope you’ll follow me when you can, stop in and say hi. Maybe visit for a while. That I hope will not change.