Looking Back at 2011

This time last year, we were in the middle of our year at the Farm School.  We hadn't been to Italy yet, we hadn't endured lambing season, hadn't cut the umbilical cord of a new calf and hadn't watched the first plants of the season sprout in the greenhouse.  A farm of our own was just a few notes on the back of a piece of paper and something Theo and I wondered about.

Fast forward to now, and we're living in our farmhouse, anxiously awaiting the arrival of our first chicks and piglets and planning the crops we'll grow for our first season.

The road here hasn't been all that smooth.  As of August, our house that we were supposed to move into was completely gutted and we needed to be living there at the end of October.  Those days were hard, long and stressful.  I was commuting over an hour to my new job as an elementary school teacher and Theo had an equally long commute to the new house.  Why wasn't I writing about this grand adventure of plumbing mistakes, lack of dry-wall and no heat?  It was bad enough to go through those days once and at the end of them I certainly did not want to relive them through writing.  Then, a week before we were supposed to move, and New England got dumped on by the first storm of the season, our house wasn't done (think no toilet, no kitchen, no walls, no heat, no running water... the list goes on), our truck was broken, which was impairing our ability to even move out of where we were currently living (and each day was closer to the end of that lease) and this guy, the one in the back, didn't come back inside one night:

Talk about a stressful, sad and pretty horrible weekend.  It was times like those that the great parts of the fall shone through: my best friends dropped everything to help me search the woods for Hobbes, who never came home again.  My mom came down to the new house and helped us get it ready.  Theo's parents, who live in Montana, sent us a set of power tools which were invaluable.  During that weekend, we received our first email from someone we didn't know and hadn't met who was interested in our lamb and chickens.

Eventually, we did move.  With one last, long look at the woods behind our old house, hoping that Hobbes might appear, we drove to the new farm.

What comes next?  Ordering seeds, putting the final touches on our new home, planting flower beds and waiting for spring.  What have we learned over the last year?  Not to let the cat outside.  Continued thanks to our family and friends who have been nothing but supportive as we begin this great adventure.  We've had lessons in perseverance, tenacity, hard work and that the days march on, no matter how great or how bad they might be.  Hopefully I'll write more, especially as the season gets started and we're doing more exciting things than installing a shower and wiring lights.

We hope that 2012 will be kind to us as new farmers and that the good times will continue to outweigh the bad.  We're getting a dog soon, so that might fill a bit of the emptiness Hobbes left in our lives and our home.  We can't wait to see how this year goes and to look back at it in twelve months with all that we've learned and all the experiences we've had.

I hope all of your New Years are happy and hopeful as well!