May Worries

Renting is driving me mad. There, I said it. Initially, it seemed like a wonderful way to get to the area we wanted to live in, the house we rented seemed to be just what we were looking for in terms of expanding our farming base and had the possibility of long term renting with an option to buy. But sometimes you get into something, thinking you've done your due dilligence and it isn't at all what you thought. It happens. It's not irresponsibility, it's just the way things work out.

It's terribly frustrating and worrisome when it happens though. This week I planted the very last of the crops we'll grow here. We had initially thought we would stay here a few years as we worked toward our final goal but the landlords attitude towards keeping the house running, the exhoribtant cost of fuel for communting and the neighborhood restrictions have squashed that view. We're looking at October for moving. Right when the pumpkins should be hardening up, a month before the turkeys get butchered, the time when cover crops and garlic get planted.

I'm already looking ahead five months, trying to figure out when and where we'll move, how we'll get there and what we can do. Five months seems like forever. When you're considering leases, its just too far ahead to sign, but considering we're already five months into 2011 it's a drop in the bucket in terms of time lines.

Our initial dream of building our own home ourselves on our own land had withered and died as the new spring grass was rising from the once frozen ground. It just can't happen for us when we're going month to month in a "food or gas?" state of accounts. While I miss them, it was a silent blessing larger livestock didn't stay on board here this year.

Right now, we're downscaling. Five of the three month hens found a new home yesterday. We're looking to rehome four rabbits leaving just our two breeding stock. Half the turkeys will be gone by Thanksgiving, a few chickens this weekend will become groceries. We're still debating what to do and where to do it. Florida is a humid, hot task master making farming more a chore than a joy, the half a year heat is something I'm thinking paradise to escape. But these are vast, huge choices and with our past bad luck of moving to a place and then finding out it isn't condusive to our dreams, makes those choices even more foreboding. Makes it even more difficult to make a choice as my thoughts continuously run around all the ways I could (and probably will) screw it up.

The what-ifs of moving, chosing and planning are weighing heavy on my May mind.

Settling in

This may sound weird but the air up here is different. The scents, sounds, temperature and mood are all set to a lazy pace. The metronome of my heart beats too fast for this world.

I woke up to a brown wet Saturday. The air was crisp and studded with the call of crows that serpentined sleepily through the land and sky. In the distance I heard a rooster singing in the morning and it wasn't mine. How odd it was to be near other chicken owners. When the cows started their part -the distant moos the bass line of the tune- it was like my own HeartSong was finally rounding out. Finally finding it's pitch, lyrics and beat.

This morning was another drizzly day, it seems we picked the wettest weekend in December to move. The sky was a sheet of white-gray and the crows welcomed us awake again. I find myself quickly becoming used to this life. I donned a coat and tromped through the dead grass to the barn in the back. The animals are coming today so a tour of the barn was needed. The two stalls need to be cleaned out and the rabbits will need a platform for their cages built. Otherwise, the barn and surrounding paddock looks good. We'll have to tack up some wire sheep fencing when the lambs come since it was built for horses. Though it should be fine for the cow we intend to visit later in the month, if all goes well she'll be home with us sometime in Januray.

The list of "To Do" is rapidly growing but the work doesn't feel like a burden. I'm excited over it. My spirit thrums with eager anticpation. Once we get the settling in done I think I'll feel ready to begin.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the big day. Well, one of the big days at least. This 150 plus mile move is going to take more than a day to complete but tomorrow is the day for me. I've already started packing up the trailer with the as-is table I just picked up from IKEA. A couple returns and a gift card stuffed into my driver's side door handle wishing me a Merry Christmas from a stranger while I was grocery shopping and I have an actual table for all of us to eat at this holiday. It might not be new but I couldn't be happier.

I'm freaking out just a little. Little enough to push it back to the further reaches of my mind where it's easy for it to hide behind the frantic last minute packing and even frantic-er childminding. The new farm seems to be a fantastical dream. A perfect orb floating on the thermals of high hopes.

I'm quite a bit afraid it will burst.

It is such a huge step to go from a couple chickens and rabbits in the city to three hours away from friends and family with calls in to a lady with a pregnant cow. I'll be honest here, I've never actually touched a cow. In a few months I could be watching -and possibly assisting- one birthed in my own backyard. It's not just a little bit frightening.

Questions pop into my brain at random moments. Like yesterday, while I was getting juice boxes to help stave off thirsty screaming children in the car my mind reached out and whispered to me "What if you can't do it? What if you don't even like cows?"

"Pishaw, brain. Of course I'll like cows...right?"

Here's another confession...ready? I've only once had raw milk and I was about five. Right now my life is built on concepts and ideals that in all honestly might just not work out. And currently, there is no Plan B. Hell, Plan A is a bit loose itself to be honest.

Though one thing is for sure, tomorrow we're heading out. Here is our good-bye to the lights that ooze twilight over the city night, the sirens screaming at all hours, the homeless folk on every corner I've come to recognize by intersection, the friends I never got enough time to really connect to and the ones that are more family than friend, the grocery store within walking distance and the houses close enough to touch with arms outstretched. Good-bye to zero-lot lines, paved roads home and the skyline pockmarked with mile-high buildings and turbulent air traffic. Good-bye to my house that's seen home two of my five kids and the neighbors I love, the church I've called my spiritual home these past four years and the streets I tromped in my wild youth.

Hello, my new country life.

Two baby steps forward, one step...to the left?

I'm nervous writing these words. Yet, excited as well. After much talking we have decided to find a rental house. The bone between us in our marriage isn't holding up as well as I'd hoped. The nearly two year deployment only a year ago still has us on shaky footings being separated again is too much too soon. We're straining to be a couple which isn't good for anything.

After reviewing our finances the cabin just isn't going to be ready any time soon. With Rob needing to come home, to see his family on the weekends it leaves no time for working on the cabin even if we could get to supplies. No electricity means no work can get done and even after that there just aren't enough hours in his day to get it done. Work, where he's staying and the cabin are a triangle away from each other, each leg a good hour drive. And gas is an expensive commodity to burn in such large quantities.

So, we've decided to rent a mobile home in the backwoods near our land. While it seems like this would hold us back from our dream of having a farm in 2011, the owner is fine with us having livestock and the ten acres the house sits on even has a barn with running water and an already fenced pasture. The payment is more than manageable and will still leave us with money to work on the cabin and the ability to actually get to it within a reasonable time frame leaves even more incentive to get it done.

We've given ourselves a year to work things out, to get the cabin ready one hundred percent and rebuild our marriage. Sometimes life takes you in a direction you weren't expecting but needed regardless.

So it begins

A few hours ago Rob left for North. Nausea, nervousness, excitement and general disquiet have been filling us both these last few days.

It's happening. We're moving. It's inevitable now.

What wild, crazy thing have I gotten us into this time? Though I feel in my heart that trepidation before any life-altering event is called for, when you're experiencing it, well, it doesn't feel so great. When I mention to others what we're about to embark on I usually get glazed over looks that tell me it's time to shut my mouth. Lots of smiling and head nodding at appropriate times. The fact is what we're doing is radical. Monumentous, so far from the norm that there just flat out is no appropriate response from those that do not share the calling.

"You're going to what?" "How are you going to do that?" "Where will you get this?" Comprehension of our dream is sometimes difficult for others to grasp no matter how much explaining we try and do. Actually, over-explaining has gotten us into many an akward conversational situation.

Crashing through barriers of social norm is a harrowing, frightening thing to do when you're going head first into the blockades. For the longest time it's just been all talk. We want to do X. The factor of X still sometimes even unclear to us. But it's been only wanting. Yearning.

Yes, we bought land but again that's not a really concrete step. Lots of people invest in land they never use. Yes, we bought a shed and a shipping container for the future idea of creating a home up there. But no work has been done as of yet. Making phone calls isn't a solid thing. Gathering information for use later is just words in a book. Living so far away and still having a job here, it has still felt like a pipe dream, a maybe, a want that would probably never come to life.

Until Today.

Today somehow makes all the work and talk we've been doing real. Rob no longer lives in Tampa. It's a fact. It's concrete. We will be following him within a few short months or sooner. We are moving to the land.

So it begins, there is no more wanting.

oh my...

He got the job. Now the three week countdown begins.