Returning to the Earth

I once lived that “other” life—the one with clocks and commutes, where tomatoes came from the produce aisle and meetings came with donuts that somehow didn’t make up for the soul drain. It had its moments, sure, but none that compare to these slower, dirt-under-the-fingernails years back on the farm. That other world had its perks—central air, drive-thru convenience, and nobody asking if I’d seen their missing chicken—but it never fed my soul. Honestly, it barely even fed my lunch break.

Now, in my so-called retirement (code for “I work twice as hard for zero pay”), I’ve come home—not just to a place, but to a feeling. A rhythm. A peace I didn’t know I was missing until I found it with dirt under my nails, goat hair on my shirt, and the faint smell of hay clinging to me like a stubborn houseguest. I’ve returned to the land, the quiet, and the chaos that only makes sense in the language of farming.

Nothing in that polished-up past comes close to picking a sun-warmed tomato right off the vine—so ripe it practically bursts with the pride of being homegrown. Or pouring a tall glass of fresh goat milk—slightly sweet and only as old as the time it took to strain and cool it. It’s food that doesn’t need a sell-by date. It has a soul—and a sense of humor, if you met the goat it came from.

Every morning feels like Christmas as I head out with my basket to the chicken coop—my version of Santa’s sack. What treasures have the girls left today? A half-dozen eggs? One hidden behind the feeder just to keep me humble? Or a sassy hen giving me the stink-eye while fiercely guarding the fake plastic training egg I put there to encourage proper laying habits—not in the hayloft, not under the wheelbarrow, and definitely not behind the feed bin where I’ll find it three weeks too late. Around here, it’s always a surprise. . . and always a gift.

I get my weather forecast from the goats and my emergency alerts from the dogs. If the herd starts acting like caffeinated toddlers and the big white guardians line up at the fence like they’re preparing for battle, I know something’s up—and I trust them more than any meteorologist in a $500 suit pointing at a green screen.

Come winter, when the fields sleep under a heavy quilt of snow, I enjoy the rewards of summer’s labor: shelves lined with jars of sweet corn, green beans, and asparagus—each one a love letter to July. The root cellar holds potatoes, squash, carrots, and beets like a treasure chest packed by Mother Nature herself. And when the wind howls and the driveway turns into a skating rink, one bite of those vegetables will have you swearing they were just picked.

They say the trick to happiness is building a life you don’t need to escape from. I’ve done just that—trading deadlines for dirt roads, boardrooms for barn boots, and memos for manure piles.

Retirement looks suspiciously like hard labor. . . but at least now I enjoy it.

Sun-warmed tomatoes and goat kisses—who needs a beach resort?

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Berry Good Morning

There’s a certain kind of smug satisfaction that comes from strolling out to your own garden and harvesting breakfast like some sort of off-grid woodland sprite who also knows how to use a pressure canner. This morning, I kicked off the day by wandering into the blueberry patch in my pajama pants, barn boots, and yesterday’s hair—because nothing says “living the dream” like bedhead and bug bites before 7 a.m.

The blueberry bushes are putting on a show this year, absolutely dripping with fruit. And not just ripe fruit—no, these overachievers are flaunting every possible stage of berry development. It’s like a Pinterest board of blueberries: sassy green ones just starting out, blushing pink teenagers, moody purple middle children, and the fully ripe, indigo jewels bursting with juice and attitude. If you’ve ever wondered what abundance looks like, it’s a bush so heavy with berries it looks like it’s about to call it quits and file for berry-related workers comp.

This year has been a banner year for growing stuff. Apparently, Mother Nature is in a good mood or owed us one after last summer’s monsoon/heatwave/volcano combo. We’ve had the perfect mix of hot sun and well-timed rain, and now everything’s growing like it’s in a competition. With each other. And possibly with us.

We grow most of our own food here on the farm, which sounds romantic until you realize it means someone (me) has to figure out what to do with 40 pounds of zucchini every third day. Our garden is bursting at the seams with the usual suspects—carrots, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, and the pride of the patch: a well-established asparagus bed that we treat like royalty. (Seriously, if those stalks ever rise up and declare themselves in charge, I won’t argue.)

Fruit-wise, we’ve got apple, pear, and plum trees. We had a peach tree. It met an untimely end last year when the goats staged a coordinated prison break and decided the peach tree was both delicious and in their way. RIP, sweet fuzzy fruit.

Berry-wise? Oh honey, we could open a roadside stand with a side hustle in experimental jam flavors. Raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, gooseberries, elderberries, red currants, strawberries—basically, if it ends in “berry,” it’s somewhere on this farm. We also have rhubarb, which I fully count as a fruit because it’s red and sour and goes great with sugar. Also, because I say so.

We get milk and meat from our goats, eggs and meat from the chickens and ducks, and pork from the pigs. The only thing we don’t raise ourselves is beef, but we buy that from a friend down the road who pasture-raises Herefords and is always good for a solid handshake and a long conversation about weather and fence repairs. It's like farmers’ market meets front porch gossip hour.

The animals do double duty as our land management crew. The goats are top-tier brush clearers. Their philosophy is “if it’s leafy, eat it; if it’s in the way, headbutt it.” The pigs are excellent at stump removal, mostly because they don’t understand boundaries or respect the sanctity of tree roots. They just dig like their life depends on it—and honestly, it kind of does. The chickens and ducks handle the bugs, the composting, and the morale. We used to have sheep, but... well, we don't really like lamb, I don’t spin wool, and they’re just not what you’d call “smart.” Let’s just say their main contribution was slapstick comedy, mostly involving fences and regret.

So here we are—hip-deep in food and farm chaos, heading into the season of “now what do I do with all of it?” The kitchen has transformed into a battlefield of canning jars, dehydrator trays, and sticky surfaces. There’s a constant bubbling noise from something fermenting, and I’m not entirely sure it’s intentional. At any given moment, I may be freezing green beans, making elderberry syrup, and yelling at someone to stir the applesauce all at the same time.

It’s messy. It’s exhausting. It’s also more satisfying than a whole cart of overpriced “organic” produce from the grocery store.

And it all started with a handful of blueberries this morning, still warm from the sun, eaten while I stood barefoot in the garden and pretended the mosquito bites were just nature’s love taps.

Come winter, when the snow’s up to the eaves and we’re eating stew made from our own pantry shelves, I’ll remember mornings like this and smile. Or maybe I’ll just remember the goat that killed the peach tree. Either way—it’s all part of the adventure.

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Window Garden

A few months ago I decided to see what would grow in the winter months in my south facing windows. I also decided to try hydroponic gardening rather than take up room with soil containers. I completely automated the system since I was leaving for a week for vacation. The nutrient solution pumps in the top, drains out the bottom and is on a timer to come on for 15 minutes, 3 times a day. The growing medium is 4 parts perlite, 1 part peat. As you can see, I came home to a jungle! I'm really amazed at the growth from hydroponics using just natural light in the windows. I didn't take a picture of the strawberries but they're looking just as good and are starting to blossom. And I've been eating snow peas for weeks now.

Beet greens growing in a window box.

Buttercrunch lettuce in a 20 oz. plastic Dixie drink cup.

Summer Squash - note the blossom on the left. If you look closely you'll see loads of buds.

Cherry tomato in a 1 gallon bucket. Buds are starting to appear. 

Kale and Swiss Chard. The cabbage on the left looks like it just might form a head.

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3 Bean Salad

Well, look who's making a comeback — the garden! After suffering a tragic case of “death by goat” over the July 4th weekend (because nothing says ‘freedom’ like hoofprints in your broccoli), it's finally pulling itself together. Honestly, I wasn’t sure it would. I nearly held a memorial service next to the compost pile.

But hope springs eternal — or at least it re-sprouts if you replant fast enough and glare menacingly at the fence every time a goat walks by.

The squash and cucumbers are making up for lost time, flaunting more blossoms than a prom corsage stand. The beans and peas are hustling to prove they belong in the garden and not a petting zoo disaster film. The second-round broccoli and cauliflower are looking cautiously optimistic, probably muttering among themselves, “Just lay low. Maybe the goats won’t notice us this time.”

The tomatoes —, bless their squashed little hearts —, weren’t eaten, just flattened in the panicked goat exodus as my English Shepherds reenacted the Normandy invasion: barking, snarling, and herding like their doggie diplomas depended on it.

And now for the harvest update… drumroll, please…

I picked three green beans today.

Yup. Three.

Count ‘em: one, two, three. (Yes, I did. Out loud. In the garden. With the dog looking at me like I’d lost what’s left of my marbles.)

So, naturally, I’m having a Three Bean Salad for lunch. Heavy on the optimism, light on the actual salad. Might have to supplement it with a slice of cheese and a prayer.

But hey, it’s a start. Victory gardens didn’t win the war in a day either.

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Now That Gets My Goat!

 

Why is it that on a farm with goats, the things that really get your goat almost always involve. . . well, goats?

Seriously, anyone who doesn’t have goats probably thinks they’re all sunshine, skipping, and milk commercials. Ha! Goats are like toddlers with crowbars and nothing but time. They spend every waking moment plotting how to break, eat, climb, destroy, or escape. And they’re brilliant. I’m not even convinced they’re animals—I’m pretty sure they’re a small, hairy demolition crew with hooves.

Take Saturday, for example.

It was a quiet morning—too quiet, as any seasoned farm gal will tell you. I was just about to sit down with my herb tea when the dogs went berserk. Not just the “Hey, someone’s pulling into the driveway” bark. No, this was the “INVASION! EVERYBODY PANIC!” bark.

I stepped onto the deck and saw it: my garden… my beautiful, hard-won, back-breaking, sweat-drenched garden. . . under siege.

And there they were—the goats. The inmates had organized a full prison break!

They weren’t just nibbling. Not even casually sampling. No, they were throwing a full-blown brunch. Frolicking like toddlers at a trampoline park, tails in the air, broccoli bits hanging from their lips like it was dollar margarita night at Applebee’s.

Peas? Gone. Broccoli? Gone. Cauliflower? Gone. Corn? Let’s just say it didn’t stand a chance. The blueberry bushes were untouched, but they had cleaned off every single blueberry. The only survivors were the tomatoes (which apparently didn’t pass muster), the summer squash and zucchini (miraculously unscathed), and the radishes—because, let’s face it, not even goats like radishes.

And do you think they looked even slightly guilty when I came stomping down in my barn boots like an angry landlady? Nope. They looked up at me like, “Oh hey, you’re just in time. We’re harvesting the garden for you.”

So, after wrangling the criminal element back into their pen (which is starting to resemble a goat version of Alcatraz), I headed to the farm store to see if they had any vegetable plants left. At this point in the season, I figured my best hope was a display of dusty seed packets and maybe a plastic carrot.

But miracle of miracles—they still had plants. Not great plants, mind you. These were the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree version of veggies: wilted, sad, probably already questioning their will to live. But they were five bucks for a full flat. And pumpkins were free. Free! I guess everyone else had given up on pumpkins this late in the game. Not me. With the way things are going, I might need a Cinderella moment before fall.

Then came the replanting. I picked the hottest day of the summer for this, because of course I did. I was sweating like a sinner at a tent revival, dirt in places I don’t even want to talk about, and one of the goats kept hollering from across the fence like she was the victim in all this. “Excuse me, human! We noticed you forgot to replant the kale!”

So now we wait. The frost usually hits us right around the first week of September, which gives my new plants about oh. . . three weeks to get their act together and produce something worth eating.

If we have a very warm summer. . .

If I fertilize like I’m prepping for the county fair. . .

If the goats don’t stage another jailbreak. . .

And if I can string up more fencing, add a padlock, a moat, and maybe hire a goat whisperer with a taser. . .
Then maybe—just maybe—we’ll end the season with a harvest instead of another episode of “Goat Gone Wild.”

Well—miracles can happen.

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Survival Seeds

DH and I have spent the past few years chatting (and sometimes debating) about the importance of growing and storing non-hybrid, non-GMO vegetables. As hybrid seeds and genetically modified crops take over the market, it just seems smart—old-fashioned smart—to invest in seeds you can actually replant year after year. I bet you've thought about it too, or maybe you're already ahead of us and growing your own stash of heirloom goodness.

We’ve browsed more websites than I care to admit—some of those seed packages are priced like you’re buying a gold mine, not a tomato. One of them actually made me wonder if I’d accidentally clicked on a mortgage refinancing site. But then we stumbled across a gem: Hometown Seeds.

They sell a survival seed package that’s about 1½ pounds of 16 different vegetable seeds, all sealed for long-term storage. It comes with planting and storing instructions and, get this, it’s affordable. Like, actual people on actual farms can afford it affordable. They're even running a sale right now, and I have to say, the customer service was downright refreshing. A gal named Joni sent my order out, and it was in my mailbox four days later. That's faster than it takes me to find my gardening gloves.

Now all I have to do is wait for spring. I’m already picturing rows of healthy, non-GMO, non-hybrid vegetables waving in the breeze. And the best part? I can harvest the seeds from this year’s crop and use them for next year’s garden. That’s the kind of recycling I can get behind!

(And no, before you ask—that beautiful garden photo isn’t mine. That’s from Hometown Seeds' website. Mine looks a bit more... realistic. But I’m thinking of printing out that photo and posting it right in the middle of my garden for inspiration. Or maybe intimidation. “See this, lettuce? This is your potential. Shape up.”)

So if you’ve been toying with the idea of survival seeds, this might be the perfect time to start. It’s one small step toward food independence—and one giant leap for your zucchini plants.

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