It is the time of the year where we look at our farm and dream about what it can be…what we want it to be. It makes me feel like a little kid in some ways. I literally find myself driving and day dreaming about what it would be like to have our farm completely self sustaining for our family and profitable enough to make a living from. I am not afraid to work hard and my husband works harder than any person I know. We dream big. We have huge aspirations. We don’t care about making a ton of money, we just want to make enough to live comfortably.
What happens when you get to the point on your farm/homestead or as we call it, our farmstead where we need to go all in and work from the farm or back off and work our current jobs as our main income and do less around the farm? How do you make that transition? What does that look like? These are the types of questions that are running through my mind every day.
I follow several other farmers/homesteaders through social media, magazines, classes, online classes, etc. While I am learning a lot, I still sometimes don’t understand how they made that leap. Yet I have this overwhelming desire to do so. I know that my husband does also.
This is what we are working on. We have been looking into all of the rules, laws, regulations that come along with lovely New York State (and I am sure any state) on what exactly we can do and how to go about it. With that being said, we are working on some things like getting our Cottage License. We just got a new water system installed and now are trying to figure out where exactly to get our water tested in order to be able to sell things that we make…such as jelly, jam, breads, etc. The scary part is, we don’t even know if there is a market in this area for these things. How does one even go about finding that out? At the same time, I am already making those with my family and maybe others would like them as well.
While my four oldest children are grown enough that most of the time they don’t really want to help with those things, as they are busy with the normal teenager things in life, I do dream about homeschooling my soon to be new born baby and teaching her to make bread and jam and jelly. I dream about teaching her to start a garden from seed. I dream about teaching her about lambing and kidding. These are things that my older children have seen over and over through the last several years. Some of them love it and some of them hate it but what is important to me is…they have all learned how to do it.
I think about when COVID was a big scary thing and the while world pretty much shut down. There was food shortages and as we all remember, toilet paper shortages. While we don’t make our own toilet paper, we do grow much of what we eat. Life for us did not change all that much other than the kids missing sports and their friends. We did not go without. My hope for my children is that they saw that…they felt that…they realized that they never missed a meal. Meals were not different for them. The hard work that we did made a difference. While most of my children don’t really help around the farm, they do know how to if needed. That’s what counts to us.
Now that we are several years out from the original outbreak of COVID, my husband and I look at what direction we want the farm to go. It is really hard to narrow it down. I dream of being outside and working with multiple bee hives. We have had between 2-5 for the last several years. Boy have we learned a lot and often the hard way. We have learned about the devastating affects that the wind can have or what happens when an animal knocks over a hive or the hated verroa mites and how your hive can look great in February and then be dead come April. We have learned the hard way how to decap honey and how to hand spin it out of frames before purchasing an extractor.
Now that we have officially had our hives inspected, we are really hoping that we can work on labeling so that we can properly sell our honey…sell some of not only our hard work with trying to keep these bees healthy and strong but also the bees hard work. There is something amazing about walking through the sunflower patch and watching the honeybees going from flower to flower pollinating and then watching them fly back to their hive with their pollen legs. Plus, who knew that honey bees are actually rather docile bees. Yes, they can be absolutely angry and scary but as a whole, even when we catch a swarm of bees, they can easily be worked with in nothing other than shorts and a t-shirt (if you don’t believe me, look through our facebook page of pictures and you will see my husband placing a swarm in a hive with no bee suit on). So here is to hoping and praying for a good turnout of honey and eventually wax and candles from our hives this upcoming year.
We also dream about making amazing meals and helping our community to eat well also. We raise sheep and goats (btw, I had goat leg for the first time this past summer…sooooo good) and a cow and some pigs, rabbits and chickens. This provides for a great source of protein. It gives a good variety of meats to cook. I feel good about it because our animals are loved. While, yes their ultimate purpose is for meat for us but while they are alive, they are loved. Our sheep, goats, cows, and pigs are friendly. They enjoy being pet. All of our animals will do just about anything for a handful of grain…lol. I swear they can sense when you open that grain bucket. They all come running and yelling for more. They totally forget about the mix of clover, alfalfa and timothy hay that they were just happily munching away at.
I don’t know how many have seen new born lambs or goats or calves but it is truly amazing to watch. This is where the dreaming comes from. It doesn’t seem to matter what is going on in life, how much things hurt, how bad your heart is breaking, if you watch the babies “sproinging” as I recently read it being described as in a book that I read, your heart just feels content for a moment. It is much like a mother when you stand over your baby’s crib and watch them sleep peacefully ot the way that it still takes my breath away when I see my husband outside taking care of our animals or farm in some way. It just makes your heart happy…a content that I swear God created in order to help with the difficult times that you face in life.
These little moments are the ones that make the sickness or loss of an animal seem worth it. They make the feeding in the freezing cold snow and wind worth it. They make the breaking up of ice all winter long worth it. It makes the mucking out of stalls and scooping heavy shovels full of manure worth it…. all of these less glamourous parts of caring for animals now become worth it. It is the same type of feeling that you get as a mother when you have your child wrap their arms around you and tell you “I love you mom”….it just melts your heart no matter what else is going on in the world. The heartache that comes along with the child that decides you are horrible or decides that they “hate you” because you parent them rather than giving into everything they want are some of the hard parts but those moments of “I love you mom” keep you going. It is the same on the farm.
I also dream about our plants. I dream about setting up beautiful gardens with beautiful fruit and veggies growing. I love planting seeds and watching them sprout. I know it is weird but I even take pictures of them sprouting and send pictures to my sister to show her. I get super excited (and she gets me enough that she does too).
I love seeing the seedlings stretch towards the lights and watching the true leaves start to grow. I love knowing that soon they will produce roma tomatoes, homestead tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, sun sugar tomatoes (our favorite cherry tomato), or bell peppers, hot peppers of multiple varieties, or peas, beans, cabbages, brussel sprouts, carrots, potatoes, herbs, beets, etc. I love seeing the sunflowers start to poke up through the soil knowing that I will anxiously be waiting to see what color sunflower it might be. I love walking the perimeter of our property, looking at everything that we are doing and praying alongside my husband for our farm, gardens, family, friends, neighbors, and community.
These are the things that help me to dream about a future. They help me to dream about what our life can be. These things help me dream about how we can be a blessing to not only our family members and friends but to everyone around us. So while it might not seem like much from the road or to some passerby, these are the things that I find absolutely beautiful in life and they are some of the things that give me peace and fill my heart with happiness. These are the things that I thank God for every day.