Bird’s Nest Family Farm

It’s been growing, gradually, in thought and in the ground. Shall we say ‘called’? Maybe, but the answer has been right in front of us, it is disturbing that it took us so long to say it. We’ve been talking around the subject for months, years really, and are now realizing both our histories have brought us here. Ed said, “Once you figure out what you want to do, not doing it is a waste of your time.” I’ve been denying what I want to do, although I’ve been saying it all along, which is write. Well, not denying, but not focusing on it. Farming will be an extension of writing, or more precisely, what I write about.
Ed, more so than I, has been taking this time to ask the question: what do I do with my life? I’m in a different position than him; I can take an entry level job. While it’s a slight step down, it’s appropriate for me to be a receptionist. Ed is at the other end of the scale, he has been a partner in his last two companies. He’s not going to get a job at a front desk making $25k, and that’s not the point. Where is the heart?
So, we are going to incorporate, market the family farm. There’s a lot of work to be done here, the place has been falling apart, and there is five years of dust in parts of the barn. But we are cleaning up, taking inventory and being imaginative.
It’s just the more we read, and the more we listen to the undercurrent of society, that there has been a whisper that has been growing louder these past 40 years, and it has filled our little valley here and lifted our spirits. Where does our food come from? What is this process, of living and growing and dying, transferring life from one form to the next? We have attempted to remove ourselves from the cycle, to our own detriment. Just another organism crawling around the surface. We need to re-immerse ourselves in nature, to work harmoniously with it, not in our arrogance, fight against it, or try to control it. All animal life lives by eating other life forms. I want to live, therefore I must eat. Okay. What we choose to eat, and how we choose to eat it, are the next questions. Questions questions, or really, options options. When I was a little girl, we ate dinner every night around the table, the whole lot of us. And I liked it, the kitchen table. A kitchen table was one of the things I insisted upon when Ed and I were establishing our home in Los Angeles. He, in his adult life never had a kitchen table, and I said ‘Where do you eat breakfast?’ and he said, ‘I don’t eat breakfast’. I’m filing this one under: What’s wrong with the world today? Unfortunately, our dinner table doesn’t fit in the Airstream.
Eating, especially around camp fires and dinner tables, are things our ancestors had been doing for ages. We’re out of touch and out of balance, time to go back to what we know and trust, the ground. But we need to act fast, because we are losing knowledge, along with cultivation traditions. But not too fast, because things need time to grow. Like our garden, our family farm.
As we learn more, about eating locally and seasonally and ethically, the more sense it all makes, and the more peaceful we feel. It’s an excited peace, excited about making this, our dream and our goals, reality. Plans have been laid, now they must be set into motion. Full-steam ahead.