THE BABY DRUG.

I'll be honest, I've felt a little drugged these last couple weeks. Hannah, too. Oxytocin––the love hormone mothers put off during birth––must linger thickly on our son because every time I look at him or pick him up the contact buzz is––for lack of a more accurate word––euphoric.Or it could just be that I am a biologically, chemically different creature since the birth of Further. I'm so excited about fatherhood it's embarrassing. Every time he cries my heart flops around like a beached whale. I change his diapers with zest––and I've never had zest before. Just to be able to touch him, to feel his warm weight in my hands is an absolute thrill. Mush. I am mostly just mush these days.There is simply nothing like holding your own child. Scientists say that energy has mass, and when you hold a baby you can feel it. You can feel the weight of life, and it's heavy––even heavier knowing you put it there. But you yourself also feel lighter than you've ever felt, alive on an ancient drug Mother Nature created to bond parents to their young. And it's a wonderful feeling.Of course, people keep telling me the giddiness will wear off, and maybe that's true. But for now it is a truly special high, and I am cherishing every smitten minute of it.- Jesse.

ALL THE FEELINGS.

We plan to share our whole birth story here someday soon, but for now, I only have the clarity of mind (and the free time!) to share a bit about this past week and our new little family.Our labor was long. It was perfect, wonderful, life-changing, empowering, otherworldly. But also long. And as we were entering our third night of labor, our third night of trying to sleep in 5 minute increments between contractions, Jesse and I were both in a sort of haze of delirium. I found myself on the edge of the end, miles past the line of exhaustion, ready to say out loud what I had started to fear: “I don’t think I can do this.”And through the blur of sounds, the voice of Linus came through on the radio station we had been listening to:"And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people... Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."And that next morning, on Christmas Eve, we had a son.I am feeling all the feelings right now, and have so many things I want to say and people I want to acknowledge and memories I don’t want to forget, so just this:I have never felt such a deep, intimate understanding of the Christmas story.I have never felt so blown away by the miracle of Creation, which is funny because Jesse and I are constantly surrounded by nature and honeybees and sprouting seeds and all the kinds of things that keep you in awe. I guess when it happens inside of you, its just a whole new sort of amazing.I have never felt so connected to so many people - as I labored, I thought of all the mothers in my life, cycling through all their faces and then the faces of their children, trying to draw out strength from them and their births. My own mother, my grandmother, Jesse’s mother, all my family and friends and farmwives and millions and millions of women before me.I have never felt so nourished and supported. In the blur of those few days, there was potato and kale soup and toast, cold blueberries and glasses of milk, daal and frozen pizzas and broth - all of these things brought to us by neighbors or pulled from the freezer that had been stocked by those same friends and neighbors.I have never felt so proud of myself, for what I accomplished, and so simultaneously humbled by all the things I cannot do. I am learning to be gracious for the help, for every offer of kindness, for each gift. Learning to say “Yes, thank you,” and relishing in the luxury of being taken care of.I have never felt so much love for my husband. He is a champion and is doing so much right now, changing all the diapers and cooking all the meals and keeping the fire going and helping me go to the bathroom and feeding the pigs and chickens and cats and dog. I can’t believe how lucky I am, that this man loves me and wanted to start this family with me.But mostly, our son. My son. I have never felt so much of anything. Like I said, I am feeling all the feelings right now. He’s really the best and he’s perfect and I can’t believe it.Thank you for all of the prayers and support that were sent our way over the past week - they were certainly felt and gratefully received. I hope your holiday season is as full of joy as ours.- Hannah.

SUPERHUMAN.

I hadn't looked at the time in a while. Honestly, I hadn't wanted to. My wife had been laboring for so long I'd grown weary of watching the hours fall off the clock, the days fall off the calendar, our sleep each night fall victim to contractions ten, then five, then three minutes apart. The labor had been strong enough we thought for sure our baby would be born by his due date, the 22nd. Now it was some ungodly hour on the morning of the 24th and there was still plenty of labor, but no baby. So I wasn't looking at the clock. The clock was too disheartening. I needed something more encouraging to look at, and that's why I looked at my wife.Hannah has always been tough—living the way we do, toughness is a prerequisite—but this night she was superhuman. Her body was challenging her in ways I will never be challenged. Not in the garden. Not in the pasture. Not in my life. And despite the seemingly endless obstacles, through an unrelenting, uphill contest, she endured. Better than endured, she conquered.We would dance through contractions together, and I would watch her face searching for signs of her well-being. But I never saw pain. I never saw hurt. Her expressions resembled some primitive combination of pleasure and control, and she looked not like she does when she is in pain, but like she does when she's at work in the garden. And it kept me going. For three days straight she kept me smiling. Her resolve and her strength and her beautiful face got me, the helpless husband, through her difficult labor.Then after what mathematically must have been 400 contractions, I got to catch our son as he fell from her body. Love rushed out of me like drool from an anesthetized dental patient. Adrenaline was dispatched liberally into my veins. And I don't cry, but by God I wept like a baby. Like our baby. I wept because I was officially a father, but I wept because of my wife, who had not only carried our baby for 40 long weeks, and labored for three long days, but also pushed it out with grace and finesse. Never did she get down on herself. Never did she show fear. She just did the work and had the baby. And when it was over I looked at her again, holding our baby and smiling widely, and that's when I realized we can totally do this parenting thing, because I've got the World's Strongest Human on my side.- Jesse

WE ARE POOR.

Or are we?My father is working on getting me disability insurance which yes, if you're wondering, is an amazing gift to get a farmer. But in order to get said insurance, I've had to dig up our tax information for the last two years and present our income. Now, if you've followed our blog, you know that the last two years have not exactly been indicative of any sort of stable farming life––we are just now feeling like we are full time farmers. 2013 we were part time farmers, part time home builders. The year before that we lost two farms and, well, that was a crazy year.Anyway, when you look at our gross income from those two years it's pretty sad. Like $13,000 sad. And according to our insurance agents, that's not enough to get disability. We need to make at least $15,000 a year to earn that (because if poor people get hurt they don't need that little bit of money or anything).We will likely clear $15,000 this year (fingers crossed) and be able to get disability insurance by early next year, but I can't help but feel like farmer income is more complicated than just what our tax returns say. It's not something that can be easily quantified. Take for example the fact that we have several hundred dollars worth of potatoes stored and a couple hundred dollars more of canned and dried goods? And that's just what we have left after a season of extravagant fresh produce consumption every day for every meal. Where is that in our gross income? We earned it, worked for it, we just got paid in veggies is all. And if either of us get hurt, not only do we miss out on our $13,000, but the thousands of dollars of food that come along with it.Anyway, if I may hop off that soapbox for a moment, all this is to say that Hannah and I have had to look at the numbers several times this year and have asked ourselves, are we poor? But I just can't help but feel like we are too healthy and too happy to be poor. We don't have everything we want, but we have most of what we need. If this is poverty––and by tax (and apparently insurance) standards, it most definitely is––it really ain't so bad. But if we get hurt, then that's when we're really in trouble.- Jesse.