Home sweet home

The bulk of the move is over with for me and the farm. With that comes all sorts of feelings of old comfort and newness in a combination that’s hard to explain. There’s a peaceful comfort in returning home after so many years away. This town is almost entirely different from the town I left as a kid, but somehow it’s still the trees my family has walked with for years before I was even born to it. Something about the echoes in the lava rock beneath us sounds like home, the juniper and sage smells like home, and the chilly clear night skies look like home. Things have changed, but so have I. Returning home makes all the other places I’ve been feel like wild adventures I get to tuck away in an old leather journal on the bookshelf now. It also makes me long for more adventures to come, there’s a duality to all these feelings I suppose.

To say that my time on the coast was life-changing feels like an understatement in a way, but really it didn’t change me as much as it realigned me with the way I always have been. I experienced a reawakening of the hopes and dreams of my younger self, and now I’ve got the skills and opportunity to run with them.

In the first week of being back in Central Oregon, I had the great fun of getting together with a few neighboring farmers at a potluck. We got to wander around one farmer’s garden and discuss the different ways we’ve found to grow our favorite crops in this climate. Most of all we got a few hours to just break out of our market-brains we so often encounter each other with and had a chance to hang out and just chat about all the reasons we do what we do. This community feels so refreshingly real to me. So individual and accepting of one another. I am looking forward to the next season of markets we will be venturing through alongside each other.

Next up on the farm is the arrival of a fresh hatch of chicks, and the beginning of the seed starting frenzy in the greenhouses! Thanks as always for being here on this journey.