BACK AND FORTH.

We have been living in a very strange in-between time lately, one of my least favorite places to be. I find it so difficult to stay “present” when I know what is just around the corner. And so now, as the fall season is upon us and the garden is bursting with greens and cauliflower and carrots and is basically just hanging out, ready to be harvested, Jesse and I spend a lot of our time pacing around not knowing what to do. There is no weeding to be done, not much cultivating, harvest is short and sweet. We suddenly have a lot more free time, and SO many projects we want to be working on at the new farm, and yet we are still grounded HERE. And so we have been going back and forth as we are able to, getting the garlic patch ready, slowly moving things with each trip back in hopes of avoiding a giant move all at the end, taking soil tests and meeting with the FSA office about grants - all the while trying not to rush forward too fast and to enjoy our time here while we still have it.These photos are from the new place, when Jesse mowed the garlic patch and then covered it with large, black plastic tarps to kill the grass and encourage microbial life.How do you guys stay present during the in-between times?- Hannah. 

SO WE DID IT.

Officially, we bought a BCS walk-behind tractor. Well, not us, exactly. Our buddies at Farm Credit bought it, we just get to use it until it's paid for. But yes, we now own our first piece of real machinery and if feels.... good actually. Really good.And I acknowledge how incredibly uninteresting farm machinery is to most people––I am one of those people––but I will at least say, even though it's a machine, and it runs on gas, we do feel this move put us one step closer to our goal of sustainability. Allow me to elaborate.We are going to be woking with semi-permanent raised beds. These beds will never get compacted, nor fully turned over, and will therefore promote good nutrient retention and healthier food.Farming this way will allow us to grow a lot more on a much smaller piece of land––so less land under tillage. And we definitely used more gas driving to and from the gardens this year than we will in an entire year of farming our new garden space with this machine. This idea cannot be emphasized enough. Driving was not only gas guzzling, but time guzzling as well. The BCS will save on both.Most importantly, the BCS will take much of the stress of hand-farming off of our shoulders. I don't have the best back and shoulders in the world. I want to be able to throw the ball with my son in my forties, sweep my wife off her feet in our sixties, shake my fist at youth in my seventies, cultivate our tomatoes till I die. And I need all the help I can get.So anyway, yes, we're those kind of farmers now. We're jumping on the bandwagon. But we're also not changing to do so. We are still building our food forest––more than ever really––and still living simply (or complexly, depending on how you look at it).And sure, we're eight thousand dollars in debt, but we're feeling completely okay with that. Ready for it. Excited. After a three weeks of work with the BCS, we can really get a sense of the possibility of owning a machine like this. A lot of food will come from this. A lot of food and even more health.- Jesse*NOTE - that picture is actually of our dear friends tractor we borrowed a while back. We have been too busy using our own BCS to take a picture of it, but trust me - it is already very dirty.