This past weekend, we plowed our first two rows on the property. I am not ready to call it a farm. There is too much still left to do. Whether I feel the need to prove ourselves to ourself or to other farmers is unclear, but there is definitely a little more hoeing to be done before I name our place a farm. Maybe once we find the farm’s name…
But, I should back up a bit.
In 2010, Steph and I knew we wanted to do something that involved a few acres, probably 5 to 10. We went on the spring farm tour that year with a bit more purpose than in previous years. A couple, good friends who are starting their own farm in eastern Washington, toured with us. We went from farm to farm, noting things we liked, and things we did not. We had been volunteering at another farm in the area, but the folks we had been working with there felt their own calling for New England. They had left the area a few months prior, and left us with a feeling that we needed to find direction.
Our Washington friends, Ginger and Stacy, went all over with us on Saturday, braving some rather wicked storms (which we learned later spawned at least one tornado), but not as much on Sunday. So they were not with us when we visited our last farm for the tour, Coon Rock in Hillsborough.
After touring the farm, at some point, we both looked at each other and knew we were in sync. There was a lot about this farm we liked. A few weeks later, we came back and volunteered (sorting through mostly bolted broccoli raab, and later slaughtering both a pig and goat the farmer was going to eat later.) Again, we knew there was something here we liked.
Over the next couple years, experience shifted our focus from just homesteading to looking at maybe drawing an income from farming. I continued to volunteer at Coon Rock fairly regularly, learning also how to butcher chickens, slaughter turkeys, and really understanding the value of a sharp knife in a way I had never appreciated before. When you take a life, take it clean, and a sharp knife really helps.
A few months before the previous blog entry was written about why I want to farm, we found out Steph was pregnant. We knew we wanted a little more than one income, but wanted Steph to be able to stay home, and farming seems to have that potential. Later after the baby was born, several readings of several Wendell Berry essays led to the belief that farming was something that could grow to offer our child a different view on how to live a life well, not constrained by conventional boundaries, but still rooted in honest values of hard work and worth.
The long and short of it is, we figured we needed land, more land than we had been thinking before would be better. We thought it would take a couple years to find and figure out how to finance what we were interested in. This was around summer of 2012. Two months later, in the NC Ag review, a piece of property was listed for $2500 an acre for 40 acres in Oxford, NC. This was well under the price per acre we’d seen anywhere else, giving us a glimmer of hope we could afford it, so we called up the folks who had it listed and went to look at the property.
Turns out we cheated. We took our baby with us, who was cute as a button and very charming. The folks selling the property seemed to like the idea of the land being a family farm, so were willing to wait on talking to other people (they’d had several calls between ours and our visiting the land) to give us a chance to figure out how to buy it. We started an interesting process that bounced us between the farm credit services (Ag Carolina in this area) and the FSA, which I won’t write about in detail here, but Ag Carolina was sufficiently happy with us that they took the risk on loaning us the money for the property.
So, the short of it was that in January, we bought 45 acres in Oxford. About a year and a half ahead of schedule. Then, we started working on selling our house in Pittsboro, which we thought was going to take possibly a year. We never actually got it on the market. A tentative listing on zillow was enough to get attention, and on Mother’s Day, a couple gave us a verbal offer, we were under contract that week, and moved out about 4 weeks later. It was a rough ride, but wow! What a blessing!
So, we missed the summer growing season, and now are faced with a bunch of challenges (like how to clear enough of the 45 acres to farm), but happily tucked away in a rental a mile from the land that we have. All ahead of schedule. Woot!
And so, this weekend, we broke ground with two tentative rows that we hope to use to save some tomato seed lines we are fond of, and get started with selling some produce while we start renovating the rest of the land. We’ve a way to go before we are farming for household income, but are well on our way.
