If not us, then who?
Decision Fatigue.
Matthew and I are in the thick of it right now.
This off season has been overwhelmed with decisions of growth and improvement. Almost every facet of our business is getting a makeover. We are finally installing the girl’s new barn, we got a bigger tractor at auction that has needed some work to run like it should, we’re investing in some more efficient and effective equipment to upgrade the level of packaging for our cheese, and the entire cheese facility is getting HACCP certified which will allow us to be in more stores up and down the I-5 corridor.
The amount of time Matthew and I have spent on the phone with potential vendors, labs, contractors, fellow farmers, lenders, and other small business owners is obscene. Although we have been successfully dairying for the past seven years we are, once again, trudging into territory that we don’t truly understand.
You see, we’re still a small farm. Oh my gosh, we are small—in acreage, in goats, in humans…we are a postage stamp of a business. But the decisions we are making, the purchases we are signing on the line for, the processes we are putting in place…we may be small, but we sure are acting big.
Hence the pending existential crisis.
Why, we ask ourselves, are we working so ding dang hard to grow food for our community? It is not lost on us that we could easily live a life of intention and purpose with about 99% less goats than we own right now. We could still grow, harvest, and forage the majority of our food but, instead of spending all our money on alfalfa, straw, barns, and cheesemaking we could just, not.
lol.
The fact of the matter is, it costs a stupid amount of money to run this farm.
And time.
And energy.
And so it’s more than tempting to think of selling the dairy, sending Matthew back to work part time as a nurse, homesteading like champions, and truly living in the mountains with our horses in the Summer and Fall.
Gone would be the stress of keeping a herd of dairy goats in the soggy Pacific Northwest. No more would we worry about cheesemaking for anyone but ourselves. Farewell to the challenge of bookkeeping, customer management, and marketing.
Oh goodness it’s tempting.
But last night, as I sat out on the porch and rocked in the chair my father gave my mother for one of their first Valentine’s Days together, I let the night take over my brain.
I replaced the weight of anxiety hanging about my shoulders with the heaviness of the night air, the threat of the next rain resting easy against my skin. I let myself fall into the song of our little goat herd, a cacophony of hums, moans and groans, knowing they were not only warm and dry in a fresh pile of straw (thanks to so many of you humans!) but also knowing they were content to be cuddling among their moms, daughters, grandmothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and best friends. Smiling, I thought of Cash and Commander, our two bucks, tucked somewhere amongst their girls. Our herd, my chest swelled with pride at the thought, was a lot like a wild herd of goats in its social structure.
Perhaps that’s why all the phone calls and paperwork have felt so oppressive—my soul doesn’t want to be a businessman. My soul wants to be wild in the mountains with my horses.
Just as I had that thought I heard her.
A female Great Horned Owl calling into the darkness of the night, who, who, who is out there? And then he answered, her mate, in an entirely different part of the forest, his deep, booming reply, who, who, who looks for me?
Which is when it hit me.
This ecosystem is important. Through our continual work to re-wild the perimeter of the farm (just last year we planted over 2,000 trees) we have created habitats for so many critters. Bunnies, coyotes, snakes, mice, gophers, frogs, ducks, owls, osprey, hawks, eagles…this farm is their home.
And a necessary home at that. Within a 6 mile radius of our milk parlor you can find over 25 storage units. Huge concrete warehouses occupy miles of former forest just a stone’s throw away. In the short period of time I sat on my porch I heard the traffic of the freeway, the horn of the tug boat, the whistle of the railroad car, and the blast of the military base—the mark of humanity is heavy where we farm.
Which is why we must.
Just 4 companies control more than 50% of the world’s seed supply. In 100 years, from the period of 1900 to 2000 we, our planet, lost 75% of the world’s crop varieties. Diversity of food is disappearing at a staggering rate and with it the creativity required to farm in harmony with nature.
Matthew and I believe in the fragile balance of coexisting and have always been deeply committed to the production of food for our fellow humans without sacrificing our planet and her other inhabitants. We want farms like ours to continue to exist.
We want…and so we must.
Our dream is for little pockets of productivity to take over the abandoned lots and fields that sit barren across our Nation. We know that our silly little farm can’t feed everyone…but lots of silly little farms sure can feed a lot.
So bring on the paperwork, bring on the struggle, bring on the decisions, and bring on the slog.
Who, who, who can farm the way we want to farm?
Us.