PARTNERS.

Almost five years ago to the week, Hannah and I left Bugtussle for the first time. Our internship was over and we were headed back home to start a farm together.On our way out, we stopped our cars at the garden to pick some carrots and greens at the behest of our mentors, and I can remember the wind whipping through, trying its best to shoo us out. Winter was pushing her way south and the garden was ready for its break––ready for its farmers to leave it be.I can still picture our hands, red from the cold, dirty veggies dangling. We were about to pack them into our cars, but cold as we were, before we could leave, I hoped to take one more thing with me. I needed my partner.So I asked Hannah to marry me right there amongst the veggies, and I remember how slowly the smile cracked across her face, how the joy tears welled, how she laughed as she said yes. And honestly, I don't remember it being cold after that. It maybe never has been since.In leaving Bugtussle for the final time this week, it was bittersweet, certainly, and not nearly as joyful. But, heading back to our new farm with our young son, the ride from Bugtussle still had the same warm feeling of possibility that it did five years earlier. That never goes away for me. We've survived several new beginnings, several hard times, and I would say we've made it through thick and thin, but we really have yet to test thick. Times have been mostly thin for us.As young farmers, I didn't know what the years ahead would bring when I asked Hannah to marry me, but I knew she was the only person with whom I wanted to see them. And I feel compelled to say something about how I chose well, but in all reality, it feels a lot more like well chose me.I'm one lucky farmer, one fortunate father, one happy husband. And I owe it all to my beautiful partner, with whom I always, even in the hardest times, stay warm, hopeful and ready for what's next.-Jesse.

ADMITTING DEFEAT AND SAYING GOODBYE.

We made a hard decision this week to cut our fall CSA short. In September, we got about half of the members we'd hoped for going into it, and so I got a seasonal job cooking to make up for the loss in income.This job has been fun, and a lifesaver. It's kind of a treat to actually get paid for every hour I work for once (farming does not always oblige). And there have been many hours, but that also means lots of hours away from Bugtussle. We are living full-time at the new farm and have been commuting back and forth to pick veggies and drop off our CSA shares. Every Monday, we pack the family in the car, drive three hours, take care of business, harvest, go to market on Tuesday and then drive home late, only for me to have to wake up early on Wednesday to be at work and start all over again.When we originally planned this - which yes, as crazy as it sounds, was our plan - we expected a frost by now which would have helped with the pest damage. We expected some rain, too, which would have been nice. The deer have ravaged the garden, which we hadn't considered enough, but without Wendell there shouldn't be surprised by. They ate all the spinach, chard, and beets - gone! - and destroyed the carrot tops. And we simply didn't account for that much loss - we just didn't think about not being there to protect stuff.So with heavy hearts, we cut out fall CSA short, and collaterally, our time in Bowling Green. Next Tuesday will be out last at our beloved market.We will dearly miss our market and our CSA, but felt we are doing the right thing even if it's the hard thing. We feel guilty, but know we would feel even more guilt giving bad food.  We just don't have the quality of vegetables our CSA members purchased, and wouldn't feel right forcing them to just take what's left.This is the latest in a series of hard decisions which we hope are leading towards sanity on our new farm. We feel good about the new farm - great about it, really. The garlic is planted.  The compost arrived on Wednesday. We bought 60 blueberry plants on Monday. I ordered a bunch of trees for the spring on Tuesday. We have already talked to a couple restaurants about sales and are looking into a cool program called Bluegrass Harvest which could be Godsend for us, should it work out. So yeah, the new farm is coming along nicely.But we will always love and always cherish our Bowling Green family, which we wish we could just bring with us. Everywhere. You have been so good to us, and we love you all. We say it often, that there is always a lot of sacrifice in staring a farm, but that doesn't mean it's every easy. So thank you for everything. Thank you for making it hard to wanna leave.With love,Jesse (and Hannah and Further)

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.