WENDELL'S FIRST WONDERLAND.
Wendell still doesn't sleep through the night––he's just a puppy––and as "parents" we've come to terms with the fact that for now, we don't either. It would be frustrating if he weren't so darn cute. OK, even the cuteness doesn't always trump the frustration but Hannah and I have managed it pretty well so far, taking turns rising in the middle of the night to let him out. So when the whine came at some mockingly-unrealistic hour this morning, and it fell on my turn, I slowly, but dutifully, galumphed out of bed and took Wendell to the door. I was astonished to see the fresh inches of snowfall––more than I've seen in all winter. But imagine Wendell: he was speechless, or the puppy equivalent. He took off running into the powder unconcerned, burying himself, biting every clump of snow in front of him and rolling around indiscriminately. Suddenly, the party stopped as he must've realized he didn't recognize this foreign substance and he bounced back to the sidewalk. When he traverses snow, Wendell uses his hind legs in unison resembling the motions of a 10 pound bunny, but leaves his mouth agape like a vacuum, plowing his way through. For a moment he sat on the wet concrete staring, bewildered and overwhelmed, until he determined that everything was perfectly cool and flung himself back into the whiteness recklessly. Despite my tiredness and the late hour I couldn't deny the pup his first snow experience. And because it has been so unreasonably adorable this morning, we couldn't help but want to share it!- Jesse.
SECOND DRAFT.
I'm not going to pretend that the past few months have been easy for us. Not as newlyweds living without a home of their own; not as workers watching nice day after nice day pass by with nothing consistent to work on; not as farmers who have put time, money, love and hope into a project that did not meet fruition; not at all. But with the help and support of a truly inspiring gathering of family and friends we've kept our spirits high, and our dream in tact: a farm of our own. And we were prepared to do whatever it took to make that happen.Losing the first farm was hard. It was our farm and then it was gone. The timing was awful and the disappointment nearly crippling. We had to bury our grief and come up with something quick if we still wanted to have a CSA this year, or use all of those plants and seeds we've ordered. Spring––if those intense thunderstorms on Friday were any indication––is right around the corner! Nervously, we sent out feelers. If we could still farm this year, even if it wasn't on land of our own, we'd be happy.Our sigh of relief came when we received a generous offer from another part of Hannah's family. They have a farm with an abundance of land in Danville, Ky and asked us if we'd like to garden some in exchange for vegetables. Bartering at it's best! Although we can never own this land, we can save the money we earn from it to put towards our own plot in the future. So in lieu of city jobs or loans, we will be farming this year to earn our farm. There is a place for us to live and plenty of opportunity to collaborate on ideas with this family. Hannah will still be keeping bees and I will still be making wine. We will still be offering a CSA (I know we've said this before but seriously, details to come soon!), and farmer's market style vegetables. There's no time to spare, however! A greenhouse must be built, a garden tilled (and partially card-boarded), and then fenced. Spring is coming, the grass is growing, Hannah and I have to get fit for battle! Thank you for all of your encouragement through all of this, you have no idea how much it means to us!- Jesse.
RAISED BEDS AND DOG PARKS.
This week has been a quiet one, minus the many sleepless nights as we try to train little Wendell. Before the crazy storms yesterday, we had amazing spring weather, and Jesse started building a raised bed for my mom to start a garden. We took several trips to the dog park, in an effort to socialize the puppy as early as possible. This consistently translated to Wendell ignoring all other dogs, chasing every human, hiding under the table, and sleeping. Oh well. The tornado put a halt on our plan to finalize our farm situation, but we are heading out this morning to have a meeting and figure some stuff out. So stay tuned! And in the meantime, here are some pictures of Jesse constructing and 5209093 pictures of Wendell being cute.- Hannah.
ANOTHER ROUGH DRAFT.
This blog is meant to be a place for Jesse and me to share our lives with you....what we are up to on the farm, what we are eating and cooking, thoughts and opinions and pictures. We hope for it to someday be a place for our shareholders and customers to check in and find out about drop-offs and farmers markets and workshops and what it took to grow the veggies they're eating that week. Mostly we want it to always be a positive and happy space, but sadly, if it's a blog about life, it's not always going to be cheerful.Unfortunately, we have had a somewhat unhappy and unstable past few months. Many of you already know about our struggles with the farm. As we have vaguely shared before, we found ourselves with this wonderful piece of land, but without a place to live on it. We waited for the house on the farm to become available, but that did not work out as expected. And although we attempted to figure out many alternative solutions, nothing seemed to make sense. We continued to work on the farm, as you have seen, getting the garden ready and starting on our greenhouse. We really felt that this was our home, our farm, where we were supposed to be, and we simply hoped and prayed that things would work out. But in the end, not for anyone's fault, the farm was not available to us as we had once believed. Not for now, at least. We had to let it go.We had to stop going and working there, falling more and more in love with it and pretending like everything was just going to magically work out. It is truly one of the hardest things we have ever done. We were devastated, embarrassed, disappointed, depressed, confused. We found ourselves with basically a month before "go-time" for the garden...with no garden. We were back at the beginning, starting from scratch....And here we are today. But there is some good news in all of this! As of this moment, we will still be farming this year. Still be having a CSA. Still in Kentucky. Yet as hopeful as we are in this, we don't know for sure. And if we've learned anything from these past months, it is that life does not always go as planned, and to manage your expectations. But after tomorrow, we should know a lot more details and be able to fill you in on our new venture. We are very sorry. Sorry for our own loss of time and money and work, but also sorry for you! We hate that it is not only our own disappointment, but now yours as well. So many of you followed us along, helped us out, donated your money and time, and we've found ourselves in a crazy turn of events. Together. Someday, all of this will make sense, we know. But like I said, there is good news! We (fingers crossed) will still be able to use all of our seeds, our bees, and our plants this year. It will all still go into our farm, it's just not the farm we'd all thought it was going to be.So stay tuned for the ongoing saga. Rough Draft Farmstead is a farm in motion, in flux, and the name couldn't have been more perfect if we'd planned it. We are working on it as we go, changing it to adapt and revising it as necessary. Thank you so much for supporting us in all of this. Even in our moments of sadness, we are unbelievably happy to have each other, the love of family and friends, and a warm little puppy to hug. We remain greatly blessed. To be continued...- Hannah.