How I Became an Armchair Farmer, (or I Have a Problem Pt. II)

Recently, I read about a woman who has "fallen out of love" with where she lives.  And I wondered, is this what's happening with me?  Can we fall "out of love" with a place?  Is this what this whole "farm phase" is about?  Perhaps.

Tacoma has, certainly, been good to me, to my family.  It has provided us with a great way for Dave to make a living.  Our kids have gone to good schools.  And we are within walking distance to anything and everything we need.  Except for open-space.

And by open-space I don't mean some big fifty, one-hundred, or five-hundred acre spread.  I just mean a nice, little plot of land where I can have a decent garden, a few chickens (or a flock), and a dog or two (or five).  I mean a place that is ringed with trees, or shrubs, or, better yet, a hedgerow.  (Who wouldn't want to live where people use words like hedgerow?)  A place that is at the end of a long, winding, tree-lined drive.  Most importantly, a place that my neighbors cannot stand on their back deck and see into.  And it's not that I dislike my neighbors.  I don't.  They're quite nice.  I just like the idea of living in my own private paradise even more.  

So if I'm going to dream of paradise, why not include a few goats, a couple of sheep?  According to Catherine Friend, they're the perfect farm animal.  They simply play, and graze, and grow wool. And no offense to Catherine Friend, but if she can raise sheep, then so can I.  And I say this with the utmost respect for her as a farmer and a writer.  

You see, she, too, was a city girl.  A bookish city girl.  A city girl who loved nothing more than sitting around at the library, or bookstore, with her nose in a book.  Hmm... sounds familiar.  But when her partner asked her to help start a farm, being the good partner that she is, she said yes.  Of course I know I am jumping the gun on this a bit, as my partner has yet to ask me.  Nor will he ever.  Not when he's telling me "you've got to stop reading those farm books."  But he says it with a smile.  Or is it a smirk?

But he's right; it's time.  Time to shake this habit and get my life back.  My suburbian, city-slickin, Starbucks drinking, non-agrarian life back.  Step one on this road to recovery: return the library books.  All of them.  Keeping them will only prolong the suffering. But, oh how I've loved these books. They did what all good books do: they drew me in.  They made me laugh, made me cry, made me dream of a farm to call my own. Jenna Woginrich calls this desire, or affliction  "Barnheart."  And though it's "not recognized by physicians," this "dreamer's disease, a mix of hope, determination, and grit," is all too real.

You know you have it, she goes on to say in her book, also entitled "Barnheart," when you dream of chicken-coops, heritage tomato plants, livestock and electric fencing.  Like any addict, I don't want to admit I have a problem, but does dreaming of collecting chicken eggs and working in the garden really constitute having "a problem?"  Maybe, if that's all you think about.  But I don't.  I think about blueberries too.  And raspberries, and asparagus.  Why I just dug up more sod yesterday, just so I could make another new planting area.  And I'm now dreaming of owning my very own Vashon Broadfork.  But all in due time.

According to Jenna, none of this constitutes having a problem.  And I concur.  But you should decide for yourself.  So, whether you are interested in farming, fiddle-music, or simply love animals, you should check out her blog, Cold Antler Farm.  Or read her other books; Chick Days, and Made From Scratch. They're fun and informative.   Besides, she's cool, funny, and tells it like it is.  And, amazingly, she's running her own farm.  All. By. Herself.  Hence the title of her upcoming book:  "One Woman Farm."  (Yes, I see my fascination going on just a little longer.  What can I say, the road to recovery is riddled with bumps.)

So, if you're at all interested in farming, livestock, or crazy dreamers, but not brave enough to plow through the farming aisles of your own library, the following is a sampling of how my addiction fascination began.

Jessie Knadler showed me that that a writer from Manhattan (you can't get any more urban than that)   can give up Starbucks, yoga, and shoe shopping.  She can, then, move to the country, and take on the role of chicken farmer. She can survive a vicious rooster attack, learn how to dispatch said rooster, (among other chickens) and then, prepare coq au vin. More importantly, though, her experiences showed me that after trial and error and a whole lot of tears, it is possible to embrace a whole new life.  She wrote about this new life, with its new experiences, with such grace and laugh-out-loud humor, that when I finished this book, I thought, I can do that.  I can raise chickens.  I can get up early.  But I needed to do a little more reading first; so I went back to the library and found this:

In The Dirty Life, Kristin Kimball, another New York writer, also left her very comfortable life in The Big Apple to farm with her husband in rural, upstate New York. Their approach to farming, however, was very different from Knadler's.  Kimball and her husband weren't interested in simply producing enough food (vegetables) for their own nuclear family.  No; their dream was bigger. Their dream was to grow an entire diet (beef, pork, chicken, milk, eggs, maple syrup, grains, flours, beans, herbs, and vegetables) for an entire community. And they wanted to do it all with draft horses.  No modern conveniences on this farm. For they were also interested in leaving a very tiny carbon hoof-print.  Pretty lofty goals.  Goals that were met through hard work, and by removing the word "should" from their vocabulary. At least from her husband's vocabulary. And goals that continue to be met.  Essex Farm is, today, a fully functioning CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm. 

Upon arriving at her new home, Kimball, like Knadler, found herself in a community, that despite its warm welcome, was completely foreign and, initially, skeptical of their efforts.  As time went on, however, she not only embraced her new neighbors, but the farm, and all it's work, and found  herself happier than she'd ever been.  "For the first time, (she) could clearly see the connection between (her) actions and their consequences." I think those of us who live in the city, and rely upon farmers for our food, are much too removed from this.  It saddens me that the only connection, or bond, we have with our meat, our eggs, is the time we spend wheeling them through the grocery store.

While I didn't find this book to be as laugh-out-loud funny as Knadler's,  I loved it just the same.  Kimball  is  thoughtful, insightful, and has an expansive vocabulary.  Let's just say I now know what a doyen is, and I like to believe I am one. :)

Because I couldn't stop there, I started in on Catherine Friend's, Hit By a Farm and laughed and laughed as I followed her on her farming adventure.

Hit by a Farm, by Catherine Friend

Catherine Friend, may not have called New York City home, but she definitely started out as a city girl.   Specifically, a Pennsylvanian city girl.  But as I mentioned earlier, when her partner asked her if she'd help her farm, she jumped right in.  Well, maybe not right in.  But she agreed.  And like the above-mentioned fellow farmers, she learned a lot along the way.  So did I.  

I learned that lamb (the meat) is not just a baby lamb, but a nearly full-sized sheep.  I learned that sheep are one tough animal.  They can survive extreme temperatures, (of course shearing in the summer months helps) and they are good mothers.  So good, in fact, that they have been known to try and steal another ewe's lamb. Okay, maybe that's not a good mother.  I learned that one pound of wool can produce ten miles of yarn.  Ten miles!  I wonder how many dish cloths I can make out of that!  Finally, I learned where the term spinster comes from.  

In Sheepish, Friend's follow-up to Hit By a Farm,

Friend revealed how serious those Massachusetts colonials were about spinning wool. "Each family had to spin a pound of yarn a week for thirty weeks out of each year, and the colony charged a penalty of twelve pence for every pound a family fell short.  Thus, many families began supporting an unmarried relative, or friend in the house to perform the task." Voila; the spinster.

So that's it; my list.  But clearly I could continue on this journey for books to come.  Currently, I'm trying to finish up this one, 

but it's a little more difficult as it brings me face to face with the lives and deaths of the animals that I eat.  But I think that's a good thing.  

The common thread among all of these books is the authors.  All women.  Women who were raised in the city and, then, as adults, transplanted themselves into the country.  None of them had any experience at farming, they just dove in head-first.  Which is probably the best way to tackle a big, lofty, goal.  Kimball reflected upon this too.  After struggling to get their farm up and running, she wrote about the peace she found "inside an infinite challenge."  This line really resonated with me for I feel that sometimes with all the hustle and bustle of our fragmented, modern world, and all the work we do every day, somehow we are missing out on the peace, the joy, that comes from taking one difficult thing and really doing it well. Whether it's tending a garden, building a bicycle, or writing a story. 

What I loved even more about all of these authors/farmers, though, is how much they love their work and their animals.  Yes, the animals they raise to feed others.  For they take pride in raising happy, content, well-fed, free-range animals.  They feel proud knowing their livestock feeds their neighbors, their communities, themselves.  They also love the work farming requires.  Even, as Kimball declared, "the overabundance of it."  That's a lot to feel good about. No wonder I'd like to join their club.

But not now.  Now I'm off to the library.  To look my Barnheart right in the eye, and say goodbye.  Because it's time for this girl to stop dreaming about sheep,  buff orpingtons, and soft, loamy, soil. Because Nora Jane came downstairs this morning and told me she had a dream that we bought a silkie bantam.  Because they make good mothers.  Oh dear.

Keep on keeping on-
S-