a new place

We’ve found a place to farm! (for a while, at least) We’re renting an old farm that offers some of the things we’ll need to get a new farm started – a farmhouse, barns, access to water, and some fields suitable for vegetable crops. Up until the 1970s, this was a small dairy farm, and more recently, the fields have been growing hay for some neighboring farms. But when I look at the fields, I imagine rows of garlic, peas, squash, and cabbage, maybe some pastured chickens, and plenty of room for hay, too. I try to imagine the gardens kept by the people who built the house back in the early 1800’s – their rows of potatoes, their fruit trees, their root cellar.

We moved into the farmhouse in early December 2009, and we’re settling in, enjoying the open space around us, and getting used to some new things. The old barns creak, loose parts bang in the wind, and the snow slides off the farmhouse’s corrugated metal roof in great loud sheets. Up on a knoll, the house overlooks the rolling landscape with wide views of the fields and sky. The great expanse of stars and bright winter sunrises keep catching me by surprise. The best part is this – from almost any window in the house, I can look out at the fields and imagine what they might look like in the summer, with rows of green things sprouting.