THE NEXT DRAFT.

Jesse and I have always tried to focus on the long-term goals we have for the future – our holistic goals. These are the goals that we have set not just for our farm, but also for our future finances, for the future quality of our land and for the future quality of our life. Determining holistic goals is a process that considers the financial, social, and environmental impacts of a decision before you implement it.This is something we learned from our mentors, Eric and Cher, while we were Bugtussle Farm interns. It is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day work, the projects that begin to stack up and the never ending cycle that is life, but it is important to stop often and revisit your holistic goals. Ideally, you would revisit them before every decision you make, to make sure that what you are doing now is moving you towards where you want to be later. You may find that you have veered off course, or that you are wasting energy on work that doesn’t align with your values, or perhaps even that your goals themselves have changed. This kind of periodic checking-in at home base, re-centering and making sure everybody is on the same page, has been immensely helpful to our business, our marriage, and our sanity!Last December, Jesse and I found ourselves on a date for the first time since Further had been born – our first time alone in one year! Sitting in a hotel bar while my parents blessedly watched the baby upstairs, we used that time to revisit our holistic goals. And we discovered some surprising things. We were both feeling like our current distribution model was unsustainable – the hour long drive to market twice a week was starting to take a toll. Not just hard in terms of gas mileage, but hard to be off the farm two ENTIRE days a week. We want to be a part of the community we are feeding, to be involved in a way that isn’t just driving in and dropping off our food. But we don’t have extra time to go back into town for activities, socializing, volunteering, local politics and social justice – we don’t have another full day to give. So, we end up feeling disconnected.Also, it turns out that the cliché is incredibly true: having a baby changes everything. We want so many things for Further – we want him to have that same sense of community connection that we are craving. We want him to have the option of school or sports or lessons or even simply playing with friends on a regular basis. Most of all perhaps, we want Further to be closer to his grandparents – to see them regularly, not occasionally. We selfishly want and need his grandparents’ help to allow us to work more on the farm, or perhaps even have another child some day.As we talked about all these things last December, we allowed ourselves to say something out loud for the first time: Maybe we can’t have all of these things here. Maybe Bugtussle isn’t our forever home.It was a difficult thing to say – a difficult idea to even entertain. We had finally gotten our farm to a really great place: The cabin we had worked so hard to build, the home where Further was born. The land Jesse had been slowly carving out by hand, clearing and tilling and mulching and nurturing. The neighbors we love and had worked alongside, their children we were watching grow up. Our little homestead was a paradise. But we had come to see that our paradise was just too isolated from the other parts of life we wanted for ourselves – we conceded that our holistic goals could not be fully achieved here. Bugtussle was maybe just not in the right place for our new family.Honestly, I could go on and on about all of our reasons, about how many times we went back and forth about what we should do, about all the thinking and rethinking and praying and agonizing that went into this, but we ultimately knew it was what we had to do. And so we began to talk with our families and to start looking.Well, to go ahead and jump right to the end of it, we found it. We found our new farm. It happened very quickly and unexpectedly. It is in Anderson County, still beautiful and surrounded by woods and creeks. Still very isolated while also being close to many major cities as well as our families. We are incredibly excited and terribly devastated at the same time. Bittersweet. Leaving is hard. Change is hard. We will miss our market – our Bowling Green family and friends that have been our support system and our customers for four years now. We will miss our Bugtussle family, the Smiths who are actual family to us, and our wonderful neighbors who are the definition of generous and kind.And so, this Rough Draft of ours continues to be just that. Right now, we are still trying to focus on the growing season. We won’t be transitioning to the new farm until the winter, until after our fall share ends. We are anxious to share more with you about the new place, but our energy is still entirely here right now. On saving the blighted tomatoes, on weeding the late sweet corn and keeping the deer out of the sweet potatoes. We just keep farming, keep moving forward and taking the changes as they come at us. Keep trying our hardest to do what is best for the garden, for the land, for our family.-Hannah. 

FAVORS AND NEIGHBORS.

I was standing in the garden cultivating as best I could despite the heat. It was only May, but no one told the weather. The air was blistering hot, lingering somewhere between ninety degrees and fire. I could hear a golf cart coming up the drive, and when it came into view, I realized it was one of my favorite humans, our neighbor Sam. So I stepped into the shade to chat.Sam's an old-timer and has done his fair share of hard work over the years. But his son and grandson were putting up square bales of hay and wanted to see if I could come help.We had a lot to do in the gardens, but if I've learned anything living out here, it's that if someone comes asking for help, they need it. So I put down my hoe, hopped on the golf cart and spent an hour or so heaving large square bales into a barn sweating like crazy in the heavy spring heat. And when it was over, they thanked me and I just went back to what I was doing.Then the other day Hannah and I had a bulldozer come out and clear some land for next year's garden (more on this later). There were at least infinity trees in the area, which left infinity roots and I really felt like it needed a discing afterward to break them up, and break up the bulldozing compaction. But we don't own a disc. Neither do Eric and Cher with whom we often work. I knew Sam and his family, however, did.So I called Sam and sheepishly told him I needed some help, but we were willing and wanting to pay for it. Despite the fact that it's June, that no one has a spare second, they were over shortly thereafter with a giant tractor and a disc. Then Sam's grandkid did the discing while he and I talked about farming. When it was over I asked them how much I owed them, and they laughed. They wouldn't let me pay them for the work. Out here, you pay in favors. And when someone asks for help, they need it, and you do it not because it helps you, but because this is a community and it helps everyone.We truly cherish this place. And the community here is rapidly becoming our most prized possession. We don't know what we would do without it.- Jesse.

HOME AGAIN.

It's been quiet on the blog for the past week, mostly because we are home and no longer have the internet everyday! It was straight back to work - baling hay, popping and planting garlic, hauling the remainder of the squash indoors before the cold snap, midwife appointments and CSA deliveries - all over the past few days. And still, we are oh-so-content to be home. With all the stresses of the past month - the turkeys and pigs and goats escaping CONSTANTLY and destroying gardens and pooping all over our storage crops and causing us to question what we are doing wrong - I had this fear that we would never want leave Cape Cod. So it was nice to feel that pull for home as our vacation came to an end.We will try to have the blog back up with regularly scheduled posts soon. But today, we are enjoying this frosty weather, loading up the woodstove, and pretending that we don't hear the pig who is rooting around in the front yard.- Hannah.

LOUISVILLE.

We are heading back to the farm today.....and we are so ready. We had a perfect vacation: plenty of relaxing, over-the-top amazing food, making lots of new friends and visiting with all our favorite people. But home. HOME. There is nothing like it. This whole trip was basically a giant food tour - from one restaurant to one coffee shop to one donut shop to the next - our poor bellies are more than ready to be back to a diet of simple veggies. We are eager to be eating our own good food again, to be physically active again, very ready to squeeze our big pup!Here are some photos from the weekend in Louisville. Once again, the city did not disappoint us. We will write some more about our time in Louisville later, but right now - we are heading south to Bugtussle.- Hannah.So many murals in this city.This shop is (and smells) incredible.Holy cow, Holy Grale - you are wonderful. Best hosts ever. Best baby ever. Best husband ever.Eiderdown continues to be perfect.  Please & Thank You boasts the best chocolate chip cookie in Louisville - I won't argue with that. An antique shop in a warehouse - we spent hours and hours getting lost.Up before the sun (per usual) on a rainy Sunday at Sunergos.Brunch of a lifetime.