Three Years In The Making

It was supposed to be so easy.

Well, maybe not easy. But we certainly thought we had it all figured out when we first made the decision to pack up our things and move to Cortes Island. Give up small luxuries and urban conveniences. Find ourselves (and figure out each other).

Farm.

We landed on 350 acres of beautiful, got comfortable with the concept of composting toilets and became addicted to woodburning stoves, raw milk and eggs from our small flock of hens.

Farming.

We bought this domain, gum boots and a pitch fork. Dusted off our cast iron and prepared to get dirty.

But we didn’t. Or we haven’t. Maybe we couldn’t?

We will, though.

We will farm.

Maybe we are farming?

Right now, we are homesteading. We are homesteaders. We grow food, we raise meat, we harvest eggs, we collect milk.

We occasionally have a little bit to spare.

In 2014, we welcomed our daughter into the world, got to know a new piece of land and continued experimenting. Homesteading. Plotting our gradual transition to farming for the first time.

The difference is perhaps about intention. Scope. What we hope to achieve and how much of our day is outside instead of on our computers. It feels a little bit like a graduation, but it shouldn’t. It isn’t.

As we prepare to hunker down for winter, celebrate the holidays and cross our fingers that a plot of land appears in our grasp in early 2015…it seemed like the right time to set up this space. To do a better job tracking our progress. The little wins and many frustrations that come with this way of life.