The Lonely Days In Between

The months have passed. Not much has changed. More clean up, more cutting of wood, more days.

And I understand my greatest error: not taking into account how terribly lonely my social self would be out here.

Through the summer's hot days and the crisp freshness of fall leaves, I realize that I have changed. After putting my heart and soul into getting us onto a farm, I see now that there is a void in my life it will not fill (at least for a while) . . . the desperate need for interaction with life, with people . . . the desperate interaction for a change of scenery or just a change of place. Normally, having a job satisfies that, but with the ongoing Emma-no second car-no money for a second car- situation, I feel trapped. With me, feeling trapped leads to panic attacks and breakdowns.

These are the hard days when the dream is less a diamond and more a shattered crystal: still beautiful, but less perfect.

So, the focus of this blog changes now. No longer is it just about the farm, our dream, etc. Now it will reflect my search for wholeness in my life -- my search for creativity, inspiration, and travel newness while remaining grounded on the farm. Life is about evolving, and so must blogs.

3 Things They Don't Tell You When You Move to the Farm

The mower sitting where it died. It's old and cheap and K doesn't have time to fix it.

1) That it will be expensive. Naively, we thought that raising and preserving our own food, line drying, recycling/composting, etc would mean we would live a more financially efficient lifestyle.

NOT.

Maybe after a few years when we are established . . . but let's take into account all the land that we have to mow. Mowers are expensive (very).

Gas is expensive (very).

Garden seeds are expensive. Open-pollinated varieties will let us save them to plant next year (for free) but up front costs means you don't save any over going to the store.

Livestock is expensive. Sure, they reproduce to replenish and pay for themselves, but up front? Whew.

Driving to town for everything is expensive.

Lesson learned: don't expect to save any money for at least two years. Unfortunately for us, since we are just renting, we're going to have to do this all over again when we buy our own property.

2) How. Much. Time. Everything. Takes. Maybe that's just because we have a two year old and no babysitter? Hmm...

Lesson learned: HAVE A BABYSITTER!

3) That the first year on an old farm will be mostly clean up. We've spent days . . . no, months . . . cleaning up scrap, trash, old wood, and rocks, out of the "mow zone." And the rest of the property. Taking it all to the scrap yard netted us a whole $50. Whoo.

Lesson learned: Relax. We're not going to go gung-ho the first year. It's a learning process, and we've learned a lot already. Enjoy.

Still.

Foraging for Morels

Thorns are everywhere: clutching at our clothes, piercing our skin. Emma cries out as she slips,and we hurry to guide her to a safer patch. High in the Midwestern forest, echoing spring birdsong sounds almost like a tropical rainforest. The air is rain-fresh, pungent with last year’s decay.

“Step slowly,” I instruct my Kenny. “You don’t want to crush any.”

“Where are they?” he asks impatiently, greedily searching the ground.

Silently and rather boastfully, I point directly in front of him to where he had been staring. “Damn, those really are hard to see!” he exclaims.

We are searching for morels, the elusive little delicacies that locals talk about every year. I’ve read about them, lusted after them, but never had enough confidence to suppose that I could be lucky enough to find them . . . until today. Watching my Emma and Chloe play, I casually glanced at the ground and froze. Although I had never even seen a picture of a true morel, I knew that was it. I grabbed a few to reference check at home.

Is there a native instinct at play here? Perhaps we are not so far removed from our survival skills as we thought, because a knowledge that I never learned pointed to the mysterious mushroom in the woods and said that it was ok. Perhaps all we are missing is that intimate connection with the land, that relationship that lets us know how she is breathing, living, and growing.

We spent the evening gathering a basket of wild mushrooms, highlighted by my accidental discovery of a patch of asparagus. The thrill of finding foodmade us childishly giddy, the accomplishment heightened by the realization of our growing awareness of the world around us.

Foraging for the first time showed me a joyous side to the life I’d started to doubt. Working from home, raising food, and learning the land are all lonely jobs and had combined to make me second-guess what life is. Is it staying busy all the time, accomplishing something every hour, money money money . . . or is it learning to live, in every sense of the word? Learning how to live without a paycheck to buy every need or want, how to eat without a grocery store or magazine or expensive diet directing each choice, how to know the earth intimately -- how she breathes, grows, and dies? Are these not skills that are sadly undervalued today?

One night of foraging opened my eyes to the possibilities hidden in the underbrush. Now, I look for treasures: wild ramp, onions, asparagus, greens, mushrooms, and of course ginseng. My prior lack of observance has been replaced by the knowledge of a food world I have never even come close to entering . . . the most natural food world there is.

And what great memories: Emma's excited "Mommy, look!" when she finds a whole patch by herself.

Learning how to forage probably won’t change my life, but maybe it will. One thing I learned is that despite our modern wide-reaching capabilities, the world can still surprise us at times.