Background to my farm dreams

I have always had farming in the back of my mind. My current dream/passion/goal to have a small farm of my own took shape somewhere around 2002, plus or minus a bit, but even as a child, some of my favorite playthings were farm-related, and I used to say I wanted to be a farmer when asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. Over time, other passions and other goals took over, but the ember continued to smolder in the back of my mind – or heart – waiting for the right impetus to blow a breath upon it and cause it to burst into flame once again.

That breath was breathed by some books I happened to read on homesteading and traditional farming, and the coal was further fanned by websites (many of which are listed on this site, in the "links" section) and other resources I discovered, like ripples spreading out in a pool when you throw a rock into it. I even took a half-day workshop on draft-horse driving offered at the Carroll County Farm Museum, and have the picture to prove it! But my mother’s health was shaky, I was the last of us “kids” to be unmarried and living at home, and so as had happened before, after the accident that took Pa’s life, I put my dreams on hold to care for her.

Then came Spoutwood, in 2005, and at least I was working on a farm – even if it was all produce, with no livestock, and certainly no draft horses or oxen! I advanced rapidly to a position of some authority and considerable responsibility, peaking in 2007-2008. The loss of Ma in 2007, though heart-breaking, freed me up in some respects, but by that time I had a commitment to Spoutwood, and a position that, for the first time in my life, was paying a living wage (albeit without benefits). But then the economy caught up with me, or rather with Spoutwood, and I was first cut to half-time, and then, just a month or so ago, told that my position was being cut.

And that is a brief sketch of the events which led up to this journal entry, last week:

Thursday, August 13^th

Not every thought that recurs is a divine sending. Some are simply pipe-dreams, fantasies or visions of the way things could be, or one might want them to be, if one lived in an ideal world. But there are certain recurring thoughts which, because of their content, their context, or their timing, do seem to me very much like the Cosmos is trying to tell me something. One of those thoughts has been insistently battering away at my conscious­ness recently – okay, primarily since last night, which is not long, I admit… but this is by no means the first time for this thought. It has, as I say, been recurring, for a very long time. This is just the most recent recurrence. And it is this:

I am unemployed. Granted that I will, barring something entirely unexpected, be employed by the end of the month or, at latest, the beginning of September; but the job I will have then is not ideal in a number of respects, ranging from its substance to the fact that it is part-time and not well paying on an hourly basis. Furthermore, it is only an eight-month position. No other prospects – or at least, no tolerable ones – have presented themselves. I must therefore consider options outside of immediate em­ployment. I have on several occasions considered going back to school, but for some reason – actually, for different reasons – I have always refrained. Something or other just was not right. And when I ask myself, “what do I want to do with my life?” here are some of the answers that I come up with:

• be outside a lot of the time
• work with my hands as well as my mind
• as a writer, do something that’s worth writing about!
• be, as much as possible, “my own boss”
• get out of the urban/suburban sprawl to a rural area
• work with animals, plants, hand tools, and simple machines
• be self-supporting as much as possible, especially as regards food
• own enough land to enjoy privacy, and coexist with nature as friends
• do something in which I can, as much as possible, work out of my home
• be able to end the day with the satisfaction that comes from accomplishing tangible tasks successfully
• help to re-weave the connections between humankind, non-human nature, and the world of Spirit
• do something I can hand down to future generations, if I am fortunate enough to have offspring
• live lightly on the Earth
• teach others

When I look at all of those together, “small, diversified family farm” is what seems almost inevitably to coalesce out of the matrix. While there are other possible careers or even vocations that could accomplish several of these ends, that seems to me to be the only one that hits them all. The problem is that I don’t really have the kind of practical, hands-on experience, backed by theoretical learning, which it would take to really make a go of such a small farm. I have been at Spoutwood for five years, but I have basically functioned all that time in a support role: I have not been the one in charge of planning and executing the field plan… and in any case, Spoutwood is strictly vegetables, whereas I want to include livestock in the mix, along with draft horses (or possibly oxen) for at least some of the motive power.

The problem is that there are very few place which offer the kind of training I’m looking for. But there are a few, and of these, by the far the best – that I’ve been able to locate, anyway – is Sterling College, in Craftsbury Common, Vermont. I visited Sterling College all the way back in 2002. At the time I was looking mostly at their Northern Studies program, but I also had the chance to check out their Sustainable Agriculture offerings. I was impressed then, and I continue to be impressed, although of course I haven’t visited recently. Based on the website, though, it looks like they remain head-and-shoulders about the rest.

And of course, this is Vermont! Much as I love Maryland, and I love my home state a great deal indeed, Vermont is one of the places that I have seemed strangely drawn to for years. For whatever reason, I have loved Northern New England since I was a child – perhaps because some of my favorite books were set in that region – and that love has not lessened a bit over the last forty-three years. I know it’s cold and snowy in the winter­time, and buggy in the spring, but it’s so beautiful! And it’s also relatively sparsely populated, at least compared to the rest of the Atlantic seaboard. It gets dark at night, there, outside of the cities, and those are comparatively few and far between; the forests are my beloved balsam fir and paper birch, and there are moose and loons, and even rumors of wolves making their way back into the area, coming down from Canada. The very air there is redolent with evergreen resin!

And Sterling doesn’t just teach the principles of organic vegetable growing, or livestock management (what used to be called husbandry), although they do teach both things; they also teach the important subsidiary aspects: everything from small business economics (essential in making one’s small farm profitable) to the use of both tractors and draft horses – I’m especially interested in the latter – on the farm and in the woodlot, as well as the use of hand and power tools, including chainsaws… basically everything you need to know to make your farm and woodlot productive and self-sufficient. That is something that I have not seen anywhere else, and it is why I am seriously considering undertaking the Sterling program.

And now, of course, I have found out that Sterling offers a one-year, non-degree program in Sustainable Agriculture which looks as if it could have been crafted precisely to suit my needs! There are many practical considerations to be dealt with: do I rent out my existing place for a year, or sell it? Do I look to purchase a place up there, or rent one? And either way, do I look for a small farm now, that I might be able to stay on after the program is over, or just rent a small house to live in while the program’s going on? What do I do about all the stuff that’s sitting in my storage unit, especially if my relocation to Vermont proves to be only temporary?

Of course, now that I am in what seems to be a solid, if still currently long-distance, relationship, my “significant other” will have something to say about these issues, I am sure. But they are ones that need to be dealt with, well in advance of moving up there. Nothing is ever simple! But I do feel strongly as if this is what I should do, need to do, am being called to do – call it Providence, Fate, Destiny, or whatever word/concept you prefer, I do not think it was any accident that I learned about this unique opportunity now, at what may be the one time in my life when I am actually free to take advantage of it. It will be very interesting to see how all the details shake themselves out!