The newest chapter is starting. The pause button I pressed years ago by leaving the farm to go to graduate school is now being unpressed. As I do this, as I figure all of this out, I'm finding myself looking back at the work I did at the farm between 2008 and 2011. Yes, I'm delving deep into the archives and finding old websites, the blog I forgot I kept, hundreds of pictures, and documents confirming my LLC back when I had no idea how to start a business. I'm finding hundreds of tomato stakes in the barn, irrigation equipment in random drawers, soil amendments in glass jars, harvest knives, farm gloves with holes from hard work, dusty tractor attachments, and even old notebooks full of plant spacing information with random dirt smudges. In some ways, I feel very far away from that work and strive to be fully immersed in it again. My friend once told me that happiness is complete absorption. I long for complete absorption in this work, I find myself craving a focus, aiming to build a farm team again, hoping I'll get to work in the community building aspect of farming that I so deeply love. I find myself saying, "Look at how much you (with a lot of help) did, Stef. Look at all that work." But the next thought seems to be, "Wow, you did all that and here you are, six years later, with the very same confusion about what to do with this land." I used to say that I wanted to save my family's farm but I don't think it actually needs saving. Maybe land just sits there and sits there and sits there? Maybe it responds to what happens to it, but ultimately, anything I do will be done for a little while, and then something else will happen to these 140 acres. There are no permanent solutions. This isn't depressing, it's rather quite uplifting. We must enjoy the moments we get with the work we want, with the dreams we have and pursue.
For now, I'm going to transfer the content from a blog I kept in 2009 & 2010 to this new, fresh, hippity hoppin' site. Maybe someone will read this. Maybe not. Who cares.... because YAYYY, new projects are fun!