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.

THE CSA PERSPECTIVE.

2013 was the perfect season to move into our cabin and start our business. Rain came regularly, the summer was mild, everything was productive and each harvest was fruitful. Unfortunately, 2014 has not been 2013.Not that we expected it to be, but some part of us must have because it has been a deeply disappointing year financially. What we expected to make this year and what we have made are two laughably different things so far. The tomatoes have been slow in coming. The rain has been nearly nonexistent, thus the chanterelles have been all but a bust. Farms are a place where you can actually say money grows on trees, but like all trees, the amount of fruit varies by season.Thankfully, however, we have our CSA.The CSA is the one thing keeping us afloat this year. If we were to rely entirely on market sales, we would have sunk long ago. As it stands right now, hard year or not, we're still floating. And the year is, I should say, turning around a little now. We've got some rain, albeit modest, and the tomatoes are starting to roll in. All of the potatoes are out, the onions, the garlic––we've got things to sell. But without the CSA we could have never got to this point. If you are part of our CSA, or any CSA, please know how big of a difference your early monetary sacrifice means to us––it means a lot. Everything in some years.- Jesse.

BLOG PROBLEMS.

The blog is having issues, y'all. First it stopped working completely. We got it back for a minute, and then it started looking funny and now all of our banners and buttons are gone or in the wrong place.  So until I can figure out all this HTML nonsense, it will be a little different looking. We apologize. I guess this is what happens when you try to run a blog while also living off- the-grid.But on a happier note, we had a great day at market this morning and sold lots of these beautiful tomatoes. How was your Saturday?PS : Anybody out there a web expert?- Hannah.

A FRIDAY IN THE LIFE.

Sorry for all these "in the life" posts lately. We left our camera at a friends house...three hours away....so we have been short on content! We should return to regularly scheduled programming soon!4:30 - 5 a.m.Lay in bed trying to think of baby names––which is common around here these days––until I hear something chewing loudly outside. I go downstairs and realize its the pigs, which I'd forgotten we'd moved closer to the house, chewing on God knows what. Sounds like bones, but is probably everything.5 - 5:30 a.m.I try to feed the turkeys but they promptly turn the food over. I fix it and then explain to them why they should not stand on the feeder. They stare at me curiously for a second while I talk, then several walk away and turn the food over again. I give up, go inside and start a fire.5:30 - 6:45 a.m.I start writing a post that rails against Walmart and how our culture values valueless things, but decide it's too preachy. If you ever feel like our blog is preachy, just imagine the blog we spare you from reading. A paranoid zealot writes that blog.6:45 - 7:15 a.m.Finish making breakfast and give Wendell his flea and tick treatment , the smell of which offends him deeply. If I could have one super power, it would be the ability to reason with animals. I'd need a good name, though, and a cape. Outside it drizzles, which we hope upon hope will become rain.7:15 - 11:15 a.mFridays are harvest day for the Smiths and as part of our arrangement we help pick their food in exchange for sharing garden space and selling extras at market (in a nutshell). It drizzles on and off while we harvest and I realize my two least favorite things are being drizzled on and, paradoxically, wearing rain gear.11:15 - 1:15 p.m.Lunch and a brief nap. I also take Wendell on a walk to the mailbox where I discover we've got in our next Netflix. I swear we watch maybe––MAYBE––one movie a week. It just so happens to fall on the "Day in the Life" day. So if we watch a movie tonight, do not be surprised.1:15 - 1:30 p.m.In a fantastic moment of naiveté I decide to go look for chanterelle mushrooms. Unfortunately, like everything else, they need rain to grow. The cumulative 1" of rain we got over the last six weeks unfortunately has not inspire any mushrooms. Fifteen minutes after I start my search, I end it and return to the house.1:30 - 4:30 p.m.We harvest flowers then join the Smiths at their house to pack the truck and wash carrots for market tomorrow. The drizzle begins to pick up. Last I checked, almost 1/10th of an inch has accumulated! Twenty more days like this in a row and we're set.4:30 - 5 p.m.With the threat (ha) of rain overnight, I move the transplants into the greenhouse, and decide to weed them. I don't know how weeding got such a bad rep, it's strangely satisfying.5 - 6 p.m.On a whim, since the drizzle is keeping us from farm work, we decide to go to Red Boiling Springs for errands... and to buy a pizza. I have no idea where this idea came from, only that I suspect it was the baby. Good call, baby.6 - 8 p.m.You guessed it––movie time! Again, this is not a regular occurrence. In fact, it seems to be about an every eight day occurrence. This weeks feature? Blue Jasmine. Overall impression? Great flick. While I'm at it, and since we're plowing through our Netflix queue––obvz––what else should we add? We need some good documentaries, what you got?8 - 9 p.m.Reading. Me: "Travels with Charley" by Steinbeck. Hannah: ”Baby Catcher” by Peggy Vincent.9 p.m.Bed.- Jesse.