Five years ago my family and I took a crazy leap. We sold our suburban house and moved into a 399 square foot tiny house on a piece of undeveloped land in the Santa Cruz mountains, where we began the hard work of building our farm.
Five years later, as I sit here sipping my coffee and listening to the sounds of a thriving farm coming through my window, I know all the ups and downs of building our forever home and farm have been completely worth it.
This time of year we get to slow down a bit. Early fall on the farm is a busy time, the overlap of the end of summer vegetables and the planting and processing of fall produce. As we move towards winter things settle. The days are shorter so our outdoor working time is more limited. The winter vegetables have been planted but are not yet ready for harvest. The citrus is still ripening on the tree, not yet needing processing. Sure, the animals still need tending to, and there are always projects that need to be done, but the pace is just a bit less hurried than other times of year.
This is my time for dreaming. I flip through the seed catalogs and plan out which varieties of each vegetable we will plant in the greenhouse come spring. How many different colors of tomatoes can I find, how many varieties of beans? Should we plant more sweet corn or more flour corn, and how many zucchini plants would be too many? I watch the goat’s bellies grow wider as their kids grow inside them, and dream of the different cheeses I will make when spring comes and we have ample milk again.
In a month we will start planting again. First we will add to our orchards planting more bare root fruit and nut trees. Next the greenhouse will fill with tiny starts of summer vegetables. I look back on the previous year and think of how to improve in the upcoming year.
On the farm there is always something to learn, something to try, something to improve upon, and I can’t wait to do it all again.