April so far

Today we got to leave work at 3 instead of 4:30 and it was such a welcome gift. I love my job, but April can be a hard month for farmers. Between the rain and hail that kept falling intermittently between short bursts of sunshine, to the mud that came up in great clods as we wheel-hoed, it was a very exhausting afternoon. Eventually we all decided that doing bed work in such conditions simply wasn't worth it, and we packed up and left.

I always forget the frustrations of spring and the way the weather likes to tease us. One day it’s in the 70’s and absolutely glorious and the next it’s freezing and overcast again. I've got onions and kale to plant in my own garden, but am still holding off because tomorrow there is supposed to be snow. Snow!

Today we planted rows upon rows of radishes and wheel-hoed the east field getting everything ready to plant thousands of vegetables. It's so exciting this time of year, when you can see the potential of so much hard work coming to fruition. Nothing makes you appreciate food more than growing it yourself, and nothing ever tasted better than a fresh persimmon heirloom tomato plucked right off the vine and sliced directly on your sandwich after working in the field all morning. It's beautiful, this work. It's hard. It's physically exhausting, frustrating, joyful, and rewarding. It's worth it.

Sweet rows of radishes

Sometimes when I'm in my head too much about my lack of a college education, I look at the farm and wonder how I could ever do anything else. I think I've always known deep down that I was never meant for office work or anything that kept me stationary or performing the same task over and over again. I like that every day on the farm is a bit different, and that even on the days when we're doing less enjoyable tasks like moving tarps, it's all to serve a purpose, and we often laugh and joke around while we do them. I also find that working with a small crew of people (4-6 tops) very much aligns with my personality type. It feels more intimate to me when I can really get to know the people I spend 32 hours a week with.

I used to work 40 hours at the farm, but a few months ago I dropped down to only working four days a week instead of five. I did this because I felt like I never had time for myself or my art with only two days a week to work on it. The things I enjoy doing in my free time, such as hiking, thrifting, reading, and spending time with Wes and friends, all took up too much time for me to be able to make more than one or two pieces of jewelry a week. I found myself struggling to keep it all going and there were many weekends I opted out of making anything at all because I simply didn’t have the energy for it. Wes and I discussed the possibility of me working less, looked at our finances, and agreed that we could make it work. So now I only work from Tuesday-Saturday and I absolutely love it. It has made a huge difference in my mood and I have been able to make a lot more work with the extra time I now have. I'm also a person who desperately needs balance in my life, so this schedule is ideal for me. I have three days of planting, bed work, harvest, and packing up for market and then on Saturdays I'm vending alongside other farmers and chatting away to customers. The best part? Market gets done at noon so once I drop the van back off at the farm, the rest of the day is mine. My week feels like a perfect balance of 3.5 days of work and play.

Mushrooms and radishes at last weekend’s market

As much as I love my schedule now, my eventual goal is to work on the farm only three days a week and devote the rest of the time to my art. Jewelry is my first love, and it's ultimately how I would like to spend most of my time. I learned the hard way that I need to have an income to pay my mortgage and bills that is separate from my trade. Not just financially speaking, but for my mental health as well. When I used to be a full-time artist, I was constantly stressed out about money because even when I had a good month, I never knew what the next would look like. It made everything feel really challenging and I found myself often making pieces that I thought would sell rather than pieces I really cared about. And spending every day by myself making this type of work left me feeling lonely and depressed. But now, with two years of farming under my belt and a promise that I will never make anything I don't want to make ever again, I am excited to think of a future where I can devote more time to my trade. It's not something I'm planning any time soon, but it is nice to have a goal in mind.

Current work in progress

Another goal:

I desperately need to redo my shelving in our living room. And by redo, I mean add way more. There are boxes of books left unopened because my shelf filled up and I had nowhere else to put them. We've been in our home now for around six or seven weeks, and the boxes in the corner are starting to drive me insane. Wes constantly asks me why I need to own all of my books and why I can't simply check them out at the library to free up some space. But I can't. I get so attached to characters and scenes I love that to not have the book there when I need to revisit them is simply unacceptable. Plus, who ever heard of too many books? A customer of mine at market who also happens to work at the Half Price Books Wes and I love to go, to told me he and his wife were in the middle of moving right around the same time we were and he had nineteen shelves he needed to pack. And that wasn't including his wife's books which he said were even more prolific than his! So. Surely we can squeeze a few more shelves in our cozy living room and everything will be fine. Our plan is to actually add built in shelving in our kitchen and move the bookshelf we've been using as a pantry shelf out into the living room. But alas. Who knows when that will happen?

A very cluttered corner of my living room. Can you spot Cleo’s ear?

Another goal:

Adding to the very long list of house projects (honestly who knew there were going to be this many? I was warned repeatedly, and yet I am completely shocked and amazed) is the yard. Wes sent me JVN's adorable reel about the cage his husband built to keep out the squash vine borers and now all I can think about is our yard and garden and future paw paw trees I'm going to plant. Why must everything be so expensive? Before we plant trees and berry bushes I want us to have our yard fenced in so we can plan out where everything is going to go. But putting in a fence is going to be costly so we likely won't be able to do that until next year. Our goal for this summer is to put in two more garden beds, lay down some gravel in between them, and build a cage around them to keep everything out. I can't wait until our backyard transforms into the gorgeous garden of my dreams!

Two garden beds waiting to be planted

And one last one before I go make dinner:

I want to see what my life looks like without TV. I'm currently on day three of a month-long no-TV personal challenge and even though it's early on, I'm already starting to feel a bit better. These last three nights I've spent cuddled up on my couch with my dogs, reading. Wes and I have actually talked over dinner instead of just sitting down to watch our show and it's been nice. It's not that I think I watched too much of it all the time, it was more about those times when I would just sit down and scroll through Netflix or our Vudu account looking for something to entertain me. And then last week my friend from work and I were talking about The Walking Dead and reminiscing about how good the early seasons were before Negan bashed Abraham and Glen's heads open and ruined it for everyone. After talking about it on and off all day, we both decided to re-watch season 1. So over the weekend I did, and at first I was really into it, but then it got horribly depressing (imagine!) and I found myself dreading the next episode, but watching it anyway. I finally snapped out of it around episode 5 and realized that this was, in fact, an enormous waste of my time when I could be reading or going for a walk, or even just taking a nap.

Don't get me wrong- I love TV. I love bingeing shows with Wes, I love old movies, I love buying movies and shows on Vudu almost as much as I love buying books. But when I spend more time scrolling than I do watching, or when I'm watching something I don't even really care about, that's when it becomes a habit that needs breaking. So the last goal I have right now is to make it a month without TV and see if my life improves from there. If it does, great. If not, well, I still haven't seen Euphoria..