A Holding Pattern

'Tis the season for ruminating over our evolution. Gravitating toward a holistic management style, we forewent the conventional 5-year plan and instead chose a set of goals: to work harmoniously with the land AND each other, managing a business which paid for our lives by the fifth year. Perhaps most advisors on pouring-all-of-your-eggs-into-your-own-entrepreneurial-basket would have recommended more analysis, graphs and charts before we decided to depend on ourselves for our livelihood. We were going on a history of success running someone else's business, a LOT of desire, the need to provide for our 1-year-old daughter, and a prayer. Here we are, approaching one handful of years running Foxhole and we are working fairly harmoniously with each other with more awareness of how our productivity can work in accordance with this land, paying our bills with no off-farm income. Side note- I love being able to pen OURSELVES in on the employer line on our paperwork :).
You know, I once worked for a man who now runs World Central Kitchen, an organization that addresses hunger crises in emergency situations internationally. He claims that he is able to fulfill emergent needs due to a lack of planning. He jumps in, with his tool chest of good, skilled people and raw ingredients and gets food to people when they need it: NOW. It turns out that I sought out the advisors who tell me what I want to hear ;). Truth be told the first five years of this business included a pandemic, bringing our second child into the world, learning (the hard way) that I have an autoimmune disorder, as well as the inception of a whole fleet of independent restaurants seeking local ingredients in good old Dayton...events which would have rewritten that five-year plan over and over.
During our years of working for other farmers and self-employers, we did our job as students to glean what we could about the flow of business. The hardiest of the bunch seemed to be keen observers of the world and climate around them...savvy anticipators of the needs of their market, nimble enough to run a reactionary business which adjusts to the inevitable changes in the ways and wants of their community. Ultimately, I believe that the business owners who identify as stewards of their community and consider how their services or products contribute to it, carve out a place for themselves which is much more secure and has a better chance at longevity than the more clinical approaches.
And so we have hatched this fledgling business which operates in a very human fashion, embracing nuance and maturing through the different phases of its life. And as we are in the game of playing the long game, in the hopes of getting to ride our Chitty Chitty Bang Bang of a business until we can't anymore, we are just accepting the reality that we are in a holding pattern. Rich pointed that out to my ambitious self the other day as I struggled to say 'no' to another opportunity for the farm. We have pounded serious pavement to establish ourselves and the personality of our business in town. Five years in, we have more demand than we can fulfill with our 2-man powered farm. How easily I forget that we designed it this way! We hatched our first baby and Foxhole within a year of each other, with the intention of inviting a second baby into the picture at some point. Just outside our babies' door is the hustle and bustle of our bread and butter and we decided against hiring anyone from the get-go to afford ourselves a free-form schedule which could accomodate our kids' needs. With no childcare outside of the two of us, a farm to care for, and a business to foster, these years have been absolutely wild. Although this decision would hamper growth for the business, it would afford us an undeniable quality of life during the years when our role as caregivers is most active. Luckily I'm conscientious enough to have learned what a gift my mother gave to my siblings and me, being home to raise us and to nourish us with her motherhood.
And so, despite the fact that it is foreign to my rabbit personality to sit comfortably in a holding pattern, I can see that we are just where we should be. We are paying our bills, maintaining consistency in our business, riding out Jack's tantrums as he figures out how to regulate his very human emotions, and watching May launch into the dawn of indepedence without abandon: the school years. And just over the horizon is Jack following in May's footsteps, a time when we will finally land back on earth in uncharted territory: a land in a time when we have days with the two of us and old Meldog spreading our wings and embarking on new projects on the farm...or even old ones we put a cap on: beekeeping (which I've missed so much), on-farm classes or visits, maybe even an on-farm dinner...And no doubt those will be the days when I'm writing to you about how I adopted wearing a watch to keep a constant tab on when I get to pick the kids up from school.
And don't mention the time when I'll be longing for these kids to come back home for a visit from their adventures that inevitably be away from here. How CAN you mend a broken heart? If I have to be held anywhere...it's with these three on this farm, growing food for these people in this town. And so here we fly into another season of tomatoes bursting the seams of the hoop house, Rich's sourdough perfuming the air and filling our bellies, and the kids teaching me a lot more about myself than I knew was to be found.

Thanks to the generous folks who paid to subscribe to our Foxhole Journal last year, we were able to fund this site for years to come. More importantly, you all encouraged me to expand on my writing, something which I have now learned to make time for and which I love to do. Going forward, we are making all publications available for free. No more pay wall! If you'd like to contribute still, you can fund my writing by 'buy(ing) me a coffee' any time you'd like. The button you see below will be at the end of each publication going forward. Thank you for reading :).