NO NEED TO WORRY.

Several years back, when I still lived in New York City, I got deathly sick. I was often sick in New York, but that winter I'm pretty sure I caught pneumonia (or something frighteningly similar). And it just so happened to occur during one of the many religious holidays where our landlords would take off work, thus getting ahold of someone––should something go wrong––became utterly impossible. Respectfully.Then something went wrong. The heat went out in our building while the temperatures dropped into the low twenties for days on end. And I remember feeling incredibly hopeless. I didn't have health insurance so I couldn't afford to go to the doctor, and no one in the building could get ahold of the landlords or the super. I have never felt so miserable or so close to death. I spent that weekend huddled around a cheap space heater, under a stack of blankets, coughing and probably crying a little.It was frightening to me how out of my control this situation was. The heat of the building was entirely in someone else's hands––as was the water and electricity––and if you happened to have pneumonia during a cold holiday when the heat went out, tough luck. With that being said, I cannot tell you how comfortable I feel right now. It's verging on single digit temperatures outside, and I couldn't be more confident.We have nothing but control over the heat in our house. We are safe, the firewood's not going to run out, and fire itself is not going to suddenly go on vacation. I recall this weekend in New York as a turning point for me––a moment in which I decided enough was enough. I no longer wanted to live at the whim of other people, of old heaters in old buildings, of old city grids in old cities. I wanted a cabin in the woods with a wood stove. I wanted control.And six years later, that's what I have. I have safety and comfort and consistency and peace of mind. I have a wife and baby who can sleep well knowing they too are safe, that the heat is not going to go out on us. Moreover, as a bonus, because of this life we live I rarely get anywhere near that sick anymore. My health is something else I'm much more in control of these days. So if you ever wondering how we're doing during these brutally cold days of winter? Don't worry, we couldn't be better.- Jesse.

ANNOUNCING THE 2015 CSA

Starting again sometime in May (or at latest, June)––when the garden's are up and running––we're going to begin our next 20 week CSA in Bowling Green, picked up every Tuesday at the Community Farmers Market. As always, there will be a great diversity of food from cucumbers, lettuce, beets, garlic, flowers... hopefully even some honey again this year (fingers crossed!), but almost definitely mushrooms. Really, the list is enormous. It's possible our shareholders could be eating over fifty different types of veggies (God bless our growing region)!So here's the breakdown:The cost is $460 for a single share (feeds a small family and breaks down to $23/wk)A double share is $800 (Feeds a large family––$40/wk)A share gets you a Rough Draft bag for your food and twenty weeks worth of veggies/fruit/etc., and a 10% or more discount on any market items.We are asking all members to pay in full by the beginning of the season––save for those interested who hope to pay with their SNAP benefits (please email us for details on that). We request the money beforehand so we may afford to get the season started––buying mulch, paying market fees, mushroom spawn, seeds, etc.. If this is not possible for you we can be flexible––please contact us. For more info on how the CSA works, feel free to email us at roughdraftfarmstead@gmail.com or call us at 270-457-4956.SPACE IS LIMITED. Please let us know of your intentions to join as soon as possible.Checks can be mailed to:Rough Draft Farmstead 992 Rack Creek Rd. Gamaliel, Ky. 42140We also hope to be coming to the Community Farmer's Market a few times before the season starts where we can accept cash, check or card. We can also invoice you through PayPal.  The CSA deliveries will be on Tuesdays in Bowling Green at the Community Farmer's Market throughout the season.We're looking forward to another great year, and hope to have you be a part of it!- Jesse + Hannah.

WHAT'S IN A NAME.

The midwives were still buzzing about the room, cleaning up and checking the baby, when Hannah and I looked at each other and asked the obvious question, "So what's his name?"You would think, having had nine months to chew it over, we would have been better prepared for this moment––many people have their babies named long before they're even pregnant. Not us. We weren't prepared at all. All the way up until our baby was born, we were still waffling.But Further just felt right. It was a name we'd talked about before, but it wasn't a family name. It didn't have any deeper meaning like "We want him to go FURTHER in his life," or some such thing. We just heard it once and liked it, and felt like it fit him. So after trying on a couple of names, Further was the one that stuck.But the other day I was sitting with Hannah and Further and I noticed Hannah's tattoo on her hip. She'd received it several years ago and the tattoo artist even told her if she ever had a baby, it would ruin it. Hilariously, she assured him that would not be a problem. She was never having children.The tattoo, however––which Hannah drew herself––is of Aslan, the lion from the Chronicles of Narnia (and, incidentally, the "God" character). And underneath Aslan is a banner that reads, "Further up, Further in." Neither of us had thought about it before he was born, but there is something beautiful about the fact that the random adverb we chose to call our son just so happened to be tattooed on Hannah long before he was ever born. Long before she even wanted to have children. So even when we had no idea what his name was, I guess Aslan must have known.- Jesse

TOWARDS A FUTURE.

"My second grader has decided on a career in electrical engineering. He is leaning towards MIT, but I do not find them helpful and would prefer a Southern culture. Would you please tell me how to prepare him for admissions?"The amazing above quote comes from an episode of This American Life called "How I Got into College" where they talk to an Admissions Director at Georgia Tech who lets them read real letters from parents. And as you can tell, they're exceptional.However, I get it. And so do they. We all do. We all want the best for our children and as the world grows increasingly more competitive we feel pressured to get our children started on the path to success as early as possible. (It is no mistake that I am thinking about this with a 2 week old baby in the other room.)But for what kind of future do we need to be preparing them? Will their future be much like today, only with robots and autonomous cars, drones and Martian colonies? Or will it be a future with an even more cavernous gap between the rich and poor, month-long floods in coastal cities, widespread oil, water and food shortages worldwide or [insert any other depressing potentiality scientists are predicting by the year 2050]? Maybe it will be neither. But it could also be both. No matter the case, the future looks much different for our children than it did for us. And we need to at least consider (while we're, ahem, preparing our second graders for college admissions) that the latter is a possibility, too––that they might need a different set of skills to get along in their world than we did in ours.So for us we hope to prepare Further for both possibilities. And our plan, since no one has opened the Bugtussle Waldorf school yet, is to educate him on the farm. Here, his education can be both practical and prepatory. We can teach him math through baking and carpentry. We can teach him biology in the garden and forest, astronomy staring at our amazing view of the stars. English and history will come from the books we read together on rainy days, while science and chemistry will be everywhere. But he will also learn to hunt and forage and take care of animals and grow food which isn't really most public schools' thing. Hopefully these skills won't ever be a necessity, but at least they will be available for his use. By the time he's old enough, our only hope is that he will be prepared to thrive in whatever kind of future he finds himself in. Whether that's a world of academia, or a simple life back here on the farm, he'll have the luxury of being able to decide for himself. At least, that's the goal.-Jesse