Elliott - Welcome to the Farm

INTRODUCTION Finding the Way to the Farm

I think we should buy this cow, I proclaimed to my husband from behind the computer screen. Maybe if I didnt make eye contact, I thought, he wouldnt be able to glare at me for suggesting such a ridiculous proposition. After all, wed just spent a year barely scraping bycutting all but the essentials out of our budget and living more frugally than we ever had before. If the budget did give us any extra wiggle room, which it never did, it certainly wasnt going to be spent on a dairy cow.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that we didnt have a farm? At the time, we lived in a small old fishing house that was nestled in a quiet neighborhood in Southern Alabama. Our entire front yard was filled with sand from Mobile Bay, there wasnt a patch of grass to be found, and our nearest neighbors were about thirty feet from my window. Im sure they wouldve loved waking up to a bellowing dairy cow. What exactly was my grand plan, anyway? To walk the cow down South Winding Brook Drive and tie it up on our front lawn? Lets not focus on why I was even browsing dairy cows on Craigslist in the first place, because thats not the point. The point is that I was sitting here, eyes wide with wonder, dreaming of what it would be like to be the owner of such a magnificent beast. To milk your very own cow! Can you even imagine? I could. Thats all I could dospend far too much time dreaming of the farm life that had taken up residence in my heart, unyielding to practicalities and wisdom. Hence the not-thinking-before-speaking situation in which I had just found myself.

Honey, he replied softly (hes so sweet), we dont have a farm. I knew this. And we dont have the money. I knew he was right (dont tell him I said this, but he always is). Unfortunately, for him, this bud in my soul was beginning to blossom. It was coming to life with every afternoon spent in the garden, every home-cooked meal, every glass of raw milk, carton of local eggs, and cow on Craigslist. I cant pinpoint the exact moment I decided I wanted to be a farmer. All I knew was that it was happening. Soon, I was hanging laundry over the fence line to dry in the summer sun, adding meat rabbits to the backyard, and planting kale in pots on the front porch, and I began to work toward a farm that, at the time, only existed in my mind.

I could feel it... taste it... smell it. It was there, ready for me to bring it into fruition. Do you feel the same? Is there something about a flannel shirt and basketful of tomatoes that makes you feel at home? Something tugging at your soul a bit, reminding you that theres a piece of the world out there thats real and raw and glorious?

As the good Lord would have it, we did buy that cow. Right before moving two thousand miles across the country to our first farm, in the Pacific Northwest, to welcome her home. She arrived at our barn before we had even a single fence post in the ground, and the fact that my family didnt completely disown me for putting them in that situation still amazes me. I made many mistakes in my first few years of learning how to farmgirl, not the least of which was that cow. Yet no matter how many mistakes I made, and no matter how many tough situations I had to work through on the farm (and there were many), I still woke up with a fire in my belly to keep striving. I was hell-bent on chasing that beautiful rainbow of a life that promised a connection not only to the earth, but also to a community of people who slaved in the soil and experienced the ebb and flow of life with livestock. Because to this farmer, it mattered.

It mattered to me how my meat was raised. It mattered to me how it died, how it was treated, and how the product was managed. After years spent in commercial meat production, it became a huge relief to me that I could be in charge of exactly how my meat was raised and killed.

It mattered to me how my food tasted. It mattered to me how it was grown, harvested, and preserved. It mattered to me where it was grown, how long it took to get to my plate, and if the farmer received a fair price for his labor of love. It mattered to me that I was connected to the very lifeblood that sustained me day in and day out.

And it mattered to me that my kitchen table displayed a fresh bouquet of zinnias from the garden.

When I came to the farm, I came home.

Neither my husband nor I grew up on a farm. I remember plucking green onions from my grandpas garden that he meticulously kept alongside his old brick house, but thats about as hardcore as it was in those days. This same grandpa also welcomed me as he canned homemade applesauce and pears each fall from the orchard that sat behind his house. It wasnt until my late teen years that I was introduced to the idea of real farming when my boyfriend allowed me to tag along as he trained and prepared a steer to raise and sell at the county fair. Driving down country roads in a pickup truck all of a sudden made more sense when I was wearing a sundress and cowgirl boots. We were, after all, going to shovel out manure from the barn. How hopelessly romantic!

Benny was that steers name. The steer that made me fall in love with bovines. In the years that followed, I began to raise my own animals for the county fair and got a taste of the country life that seemed to be calling for me with its hay bales and from-scratch biscuits. It spoke so true to me that when it came time for college, I majored in Animal Science, Beef Production. My hope was to marry a cowboy and move to a big ol fancy ranch, where we would raise a gigantic herd of cows and ride off into the sunset and all that jazz. Still hopelessly romantic, right?

As the good Lord would have it, I didnt end up marrying the cowboy. Rather, I met a Southern man at a bar who was simply passing through town on his way to something familiar, planned, and known. We fell desperately in love that night (who couldve resisted my pink bedazzled Bridesmaid tank top?) and though he didnt share my affinity for farm life at the time, he was eager to listen to my wild dreams.

He introduced me to Pink Floyd and I introduced him to horseback riding. We shared evening rides through the local orchard to grab apples from the trees. We began to talk about vineyards and homemade wine. He watched me learn to cook from scratch and ate all my disastrous meals with a smile. He was the man I wanted to build my farm with. And so we did. Almost a decade and four children later, weve done just that.

Our farm sits on just two and a quarter acres about six miles from town. A little stucco cottage built in 1909, its nestled above a reservoir lake and completely surrounded by orchards. A small kitchen garden, or