A SATURDAY IN THE LIFE.
4:30 a.m.Snooze button.4:35 - 5 a.m.We get out of bed and take care of chores by the light of our headlamps, and hope we feed the right animals the right things. Cher picks us up in the truck at five and we head towards Nashville, a little sleepy from another poor Friday night of rest. It is becoming tradition for Friday night to be our sleeping nemesis.5 - 7 a.m.From Bugtussle to Gallatin it is another tradition to listen to NPR's Snap Judgment, a storytelling program akin to This American Life, only with more hip hop. Hannah and I find our new favorite quote during the episode: "You may say I can't sing, but you can't say I didn't sing.” That show really needs to be an hour and a half long, to get us all the way to market because the gardening show that follows it––not naming names––is a little hard to handle.7 - 7:30 a.m.Star Bagel for breakfast and coffee. Yet another tradition––a necessary one.7:30 - 8 a.m.Market set up. Ira, the Smith's ten-year-old, hauls all the baskets out the back of the truck and we unpack an unbelievable amount of food for the size of truck we bring. Hundreds of people will be fed this week from food we crammed into a 4x8x4 space. Farmers, notably, could always have a second career in packing––if that's a thing.8 - 12:30 p.m.These few hours are a blur of conversation and numbers. By the end of it we find ourselves both elated from interaction, and absolutely wiped out from it. It's like working in a retail shop where the only day you work every week is the busiest day of that week. Oh, but the rest of the week you spend hardly seeing anyone else at all. But we get to see the customers we love, and commiserate with fellow farmers, and by the end of it we have enough money to make it to next week's market. God willing.12:30 - 2:20 p.m.The drive home is a long one––traffic jams usually do that to trips. We listen to Barren River Breakdown, though, which doesn't speed up the trip but definitely gives it a worthwhile soundtrack.2:20 - 2:40 p.m.When we get home we tend to our animals who, though we feed, love and care for them like crazy, act like we've been gone for weeks. Our transplants, too. Farms are needy entities.2:40 - 3 p.m.An older neighbor stops by and we spend a little time chatting about our cabin and the goats and the chickens. This was our first time meeting this particular local and we really like him and his genuine interest in what we're doing. Our neighbors are amazing, and though they typically farm nothing like us, in some ways we can't farm like anything without them.3 - 3:15 p.m.Lunch. Sorta. It's amazing how difficult it is to eat well, or consistently, on the day we sell healthful food for a living.3:15 - 3:45Go to the spring to get water. This is a painful task because the farm is incredibly dry right now and the spring is really low so we can only take a little water––two gallons––at a time. Who do I have to write to get a rain around here?3: 45- 5:10We take a few minutes to go visit with the Smiths about market, which ends up being more like an hour, but it's nice. Visiting, like it was with the local just minutes earlier, is what binds community. Visiting with neighbors––the Smiths and the old timers––is not necessarily another Saturday tradition, but it definitely should be.5:10 - 6:50 p.m.I've been obsessed with making Hugel beds lately, which are a permaculture concept that essentially involves digging a ditch, filling that ditch with logs, and covering those logs with soil. The idea is that the logs will slowly break down over time and contribute years of fertility to your garden bed. It's like putting the fertility underneath the raised bed. So I spend a bit of the evening, and the rest of my energy, working on these––grounding myself.6:50 - 7:15 p.m.We still use firewood every day (despite the fact that it's summer) so I have to break down logs nearly every day. This time it's a particularly ornery cedar log that, by the morning, still remains mostly in tact.7:15 - 9Because it's Saturday night and farmers know how to party, we fill this time with dinner and a podcast, or more precisely, redfish pasta (the fish coming from the Smith's last vacation), and an episode of Judge John Hodgman podcast.9 p.m.Bed.- Jesse.
ROLF AND DAUGHTERS.
Farmers don't often get to eat at the restaurants they supply. We eat a lot of really great meals with really great produce, but rarely do we get the experience of eating food in the hands of professional cooks. Then, last Friday, though none of our produce is currently on the menu, we got to experience the skills of our friend Philip Krajeck's Nashville restaurant Rolf and Daughters as diners. Oh man.We were joined for dinner by our friends The Breedings along with their respective better halves. This crew has eaten at some of the best restaurants in the country – from New York to Napa – yet by the end of the evening we all struggled to remember a meal so throughly satisfying. I fail even now to name a favorite dish of our night at R.A.D. – an appropriate acronym if ever one existed. Every dish — and there were many, many dishes — was probably my favorite.We look forward to supplying Rolf and Daughters with more food this year (and then eating there again), knowing that our food is decidedly in good hands. Anyway, I'll spare you the blabbering, let the pictures do the talking, and only add that if you are anywhere within a day or two's drive of Nashville, do yourself a favor and stop by this place.- Jesse.
Currently.
Sitting in a lovely place, sipping fancy coffee and waiting until this afternoon when I am heading to Joelton to pick up three milk goats. I had plans of putting up lots of posts and getting a lot of blog work done, but of course the computer is not cooperating. So this is a short little post to say: expect an overload of goat photos very soon.Also, do you follow us on Instagram? Sometimes when we can't make it to town for a blog update we can put up pictures there.- Hannah.
WHAT WE'RE DOING.
We realized recently that we haven't written much about what Hannah and I are actually DOING this year to make money. Last year we ran a CSA in Danville, but this year, because we are trying to focus most of our energy on the cabin and getting our land ready to be farmed, we've joined efforts with Bugtussle Farm. We've worked out a profit/work share situation where Hannah and I are in charge of selling produce at their table--while they hand out their CSA shares--and we get to keep a percentage of those profits. So remember, if you are in the Nashville area, please come by our table on Saturdays at the West Nashville Farmer's Market to say hi. PLUS, there are a few shares left in the Bugtussle CSA! Any we can sell, we get a share of those profits as well! So if you're interested or have any friends or family in Music City who might be, send them our way and help support two small farms with one stone.- Jesse.