IT'S OFFICIAL!

I'm heading off to Ithaca on the 10th of April to start a new life with my lovin' lady! I will be working on a Biodynamic (Organic) farm, raising root vegetables, greens, and chickens! We lined up a place to live with some really great people that have a house on 5 acres in the Trumansburg area. They've got honey bees, vegetable gardens, chickens, ducks, fruit trees, fruit shrubs, and dogs and cats! I'm really excited! I feel as though I'm being immersed in a boiling pot of farming madness! Of course all of this spawned from a lot of hard work looking for places to settle, getting a car, researching jobs/farms and of course cutting the umbilical cord from NYC, but I'm finally reaping the benefits! I'm heading up to Vermont in a week to take a class entitled: "Design for Peak Oil and Climate Change." It'll be an intensely apocalyptic week with all sorts of crazy notions floatin' around the room. Then after that we'll pack up the truck and get out! I can't wait!

Dysfunctional Farm Kids

Being a farm kid growing up in rural Kansas was never really something we thought much about. It wasn't a novelty with all the other rural kids we road the bus with. Our dad maybe had more pigs than the average rural kid, but it definitely wasn't a topic of discussion. I can only remember one time when it was fascinating to someone at school. That was my eighth grade year when I was learning how to drive the tractor and disc a field. My friend Sarah drew a picture of me doing this in my yearbook. She thought it was so great!

Being a farm kid was not a real novelty until I went to college. One of my friends from Kansas City wanted to go check out my family's farm one weekend. So a bunch of us went. I don't really remember if my friends were impressed with the farm or just enjoyed the company of my family.

I do remember how much of a rarity I was when it came to transferring to a Christian Liberal Arts college on the northside of Chicago. Everyone assumed that I milked cows, slopped the hogs, was up at dawn and knew how to grow things. They couldn't have been more wrong. This is how one of the many conversations might have went:

Friend- You grew up on a farm?
Me - Yeah, in the middle of Kansas.
Friend - What kind of farm was it?
Me - My dad raises hogs and cattle and grows wheat.
Friend - Weed?
Me- No. Whhhhheatttttt. You know, grain, the stuff flour is made from?
Friend - Wow! So you like milked cows and collected eggs and stuff!?
Me- Ummm...no. We didn't have milk cows, just beef cattle and we never had chickens.
Friend - Oh! Well, you must have had a lot of chores though.
Me - Ummmm...no, we sometimes had to feed our dog.
Friend - Did you drive a tractor?
Me - Yes! I did do that in the summers.

Little did we know that the modern age of farming had turned us into Dysfunctional Farm Kids.

The acre upon acre of wheat and corn planted, fertilized and harvested by machine.

The pasture grazing cattle being sold to feed lots and then packaged for us in cellophane.
Chickens laying eggs in chicken prison.
Milk sold in plastic jugs with colorful lids.
Beans, corn and tomatoes came in cans with pretty labels.
Vegetables shipped from across the country and around the world as "farm fresh."

This was the demise of understanding what it meant to be a true farm kid.

We were never face to face with the soil and seed.
We didn't know how to milk a cow if we needed to.
We never experienced the curiosity of finding warm eggs underneath a hen for our breakfast.
We didn't know how to tend a garden or store up a harvest.

So today, my brother and I are staring into our dysfunction and saying, "No more! We must learn how to survive on this land the good Lord gave us!" The desire to farm runs deep in our hearts. It's in our blood! The desire is pushing us forward into a healthier, more fulfilling lifestyle of living from the land.

April

Back To RURAL LIFE!

I recently hit the three year mark of New York City life, and it looks like there won't be a fourth! It's funny how putting yourself in a completely foreign world has a way of making you look back to your roots with little pangs of regret. I think most people move on, live it up, and put on a new set of clothes after that moment of reflection, but it wasn't that easy for me. I've been plagued with apocalyptic visions of failing family farms, contaminated food, grass-starved cattle, and food shortages. For a while I managed to keep my farming urges at bay by telling myself that I was an "artist," but I couldn't keep it together with New York City yelling down my throat everyday. Having nowhere to sit outside that doesn't smell like dog doodie, and never escaping the honking and yelling was just too much for me. SO, I'm off to the countryside of upstate New York to farm the days away, and soak in the sun for hours on end everyday! My friends think I'm crazy, but I could say the same about them. I can't wait until I can see a tree out my bedroom window, and feel dirty from earth instead of smog. It's amazing to me that I spent so much time as a kid playing video games in the basement, while the Kansas winds whipped across my giant outdoor wonderland. Never again will I take a patch of dirt for granted. I'm off to chill with the chickens and sweat under the summer sun. RIP NYC

Adam