JOY AND PAIN.

We promise ourselves, at the beginning of every season, “NO LIVESTOCK THIS YEAR.” No animals, only vegetables. That’s what we always say. Livestock adds a whole new element of chaos and unpredictability to farming that we often find exasperating and demoralizing. Livestock adds the emotional gamble that comes with loving creatures alongside the inevitability of death, through loss or slaughter. Livestock adds a lot of work to our already impossible list of chores. And yet – here we are again. We find, year after year, that a farm (to us) just doesn’t make sense without animals. The life they bring to our farm - through fertility, through their nourishment to our family, or simply just by their very presence - is key to our sustainability.So, when our friend reached out to us about some ducks he wasn’t able to care for properly, we were excited. There is a large pond behind our house, overgrown with algae, desperately in need of some movement and life to clean it out. Our neighbors have chickens and are always willing to share chicken eggs, so ducks seemed like a perfect fit!The ducks arrived and we quickly set up their coop and electric fencing to encircle the pond. We released them and watched as they waded into the murky pond, jumping and splashing about and just looking blissfully in their element. It took maybe ten minutes before one duck let out a loud squawk and started flailing about, swimming in tight little circles as if stuck. We stared in confusion as it continued to spin around, growing more and more tired as it began to go underwater for longer and longer periods of time. We thought it must have gotten its leg tangled in something and, unwilling to watch it slowly drown to death, Jesse and I waded into the pond (luckily, we had friends visiting who were able to watch Further during this adventure!). Jesse used a long stick to push the now completely limp duck to the edge of the pond.Well, maybe you have already guessed what we were oblivious to, but when I pulled the duck out, attached to the back of it was a SNAPPING TURTLE. I screamed and quickly pulled my legs out from the pond, falling onto the shore. The turtle slipped back into the pond, and we sat in shock, realizing that we had just released the ducks into one large death trap.In a literal matter of minutes, we experienced all the emotions that come with having livestock: the joy and pleasure of watching animals living in their ideal habitat, the sorrow of pain and loss, the anger and frustration of being at odds with predators just doing what they naturally do. For the next few days, we didn’t let the ducks have access to the pond while we tried to catch the turtle. And to make the story very brief and short on gory details, we caught the turtle and killed it. We waited and didn’t catch another one, so we are hoping there was only one. The injured duck seems like it will survive. The ducks are now back in the pond.We hate this part of farming, but as any farmer knows, death is a part of farming. If we could have thought of a way to remove the turtle without killing it, we would have. I know this story may bother some people. But this is what worked for the time and situation: we had to remove the turtle, a danger to our animals and to our son. I am horrified thinking of all the times Further and I walked barefoot around the edge of the pond, wading into the edge to grab a cattail or frog.And with this hardship of death comes the promise of life: more eggs already than we can eat, feeding our family and other families we love. Happy ducks rejuvenating an anaerobic pond. A cleaned-out coop adding bountiful material to the compost pile that will grow more food in years to come. It is hard, and it is good. And so it goes.- Hannah.

WHY WE'RE NOT RAISING PIGS THIS YEAR (AND WHY THAT'S OKAY).

 We love pigs... most of the time. Most of the time the pigs are well-behaved, sweet, and ultimately nutritious (I am, as I write this, cooking sausage from last year's pigs for breakfast). But then there are the times they are not: they are gone, out of the fence, in the garden, in the woods, who knows where they are. It's those times that are most prominent in my mind right now as we prepare for a really big season on the farm. We're doubling our CSA, we're taking on a lot more debt, and we have to wonder... are the pigs worth it right now?Are they worth the stress to the farmer, the risk to the gardens, the upfront cost, the sausage? The answer? Begrudgingly, maybe not. So I'm having to, for perhaps the first time since we've been farming, make a reasonable decision here. We're going to skip the pigs for the year.The reality is we just don't yet have the infrastructure to properly manage them. They wind up costing a lot more time and stress than we make back on them; than perhaps the pork is worth.This isn't in any way the end of our relationship to pigs. We just need to clear a little more forest—which is currently too dense, unmanageable and inefficient for portable fencing. We need to find more sources of slop—restaurants, shareholders, etc.. And we have to get through this year first. We do that, and we may have pigs again next year. We don't make it through, and heck we'll probably do pigs again anyway. Because if you can't win for losing, you might as well have some pork to show for it.-Jesse. 

DAY OFF DAY.

It's around 6:30 a.m., I'm drinking coffee, writing this post, chatting with my beautiful wife, watching Further adroitly manipulate his bouncer, and just generally relaxing. And it feels amazing. Usually at this time I would be anxiously pounding away at an upcoming article while haphazardly preparing breakfast so that I could get into the fields. But not today. Today is Sunday, and I'm taking the darn thing off.I haven't been taking days off this year. Not really. It's been too busy, and we've been shorthanded. Of course, not taking days off is very common for farmers. And since we dry farm––that is, we do not use irrigation––we don't always get to have the luxury of choosing which days work best to take off. If the soil is ready, we work.But I've realized I need these days off. I need a consistent day that I can just do what I want to do without the pressure of the garden weighing on me. The pigs still have to be fed, and the chickens, cats and dog. But I have been overdoing it a lot lately. I vomited while picking garlic this year. I caught myself on the verge of exhaustion or dehydration multiple times. Stress has been high. This, as you can imagine, is not sustainable.Sustainability, of course, is the goal. We say it often, but sustainability is not just about how you farm, but how you feel after farming. It needs to be viewed holistically. One can not be sustainable if they are going down several days a year due to overworking.So Sundays it is. And when it can't be Sundays (like in the Spring when you literally might only get one day a week to work the soil), it will be another day. If we are going to make this a sustainable life, we need a day off. We need a day to chat, drink coffee, make faces at babies and write blog posts about it, because that's what we want to do. Of course, as I finish this post––I kid you not––I look out into our yard and see a piggy on the loose. Oh well. Perhaps days off are more of a state of mind, which will have to be good enough today.- Jesse.

THE FEVER.

Every year, from May until Julyish––it's not much of a science––things get hard on the farm. Not just physically hard, but emotionally, too. I go through this period of feeling totally and utterly overwhelmed. There is so much work to do, and try as I may it doesn't seem to decrease with effort. It increases, mockingly. The feeling is hard to explain. In some ways, it feels like ordinary stress. In other ways, it sorta feels hopeless.But I've also learned that this overwhelmed feeling acts very much like a fever. It builds and builds and builds until the point in which I wonder if I can even go on another week. Then without warning it just disappears, and my mood returns like "Hey what's up?" I suddenly feel completely normal again. I suddenly feel healthy and happy. I suddenly feel like what we do is possible.It's uncanny how reliable it is––that the fever will come and the fever will break at some point in time. But also, I'm glad it's reliable. The first year I had it, I really thought I was not going to be able to survive as a farmer. Then in late July it broke and I was back to normal, excited to be a farmer again. Sane.Is it avoidable? Not sure. I think the more set-up we become on our farmstead, and the better I become at planning and managing the farm––yes. Yes, it will at least one day become a smaller, or more tolerable fever. But until then I have to rely on the fact that it will come, but it will also go away eventually. It is not terminal. This too shall pass. Take a nap, eat some tomato sandwiches, and call me in the morning. If I can keep that in mind, I will always make it through, like I did this week. Like I do every year. Like always.- Jesse.