Sam Wickham

April-We're Still Here

After a lot of sleepless nights over the past week, I was awoken by a most welcome sound...a great horned owl calling into the night.  There is a thrill that excites my whole body anytime I am awake to tune into an owl's late night charades.  It&

Bats and Small Farms: Endangered Species

Listen to this story, as it's a story of our times, a story about big fish and little fish and a story of endangered species striving to keep their place in the world. Yesterday our problems were smaller in the morning than in the afternoon, when we got

A Good Dose Of Not Caring What People Think

It's been 12 years that I've been making a life with Rich.  Being cut from different cloths, we've stitched ours together to fashion some sort of technicolor quilt.  Like the unthinkable combinations of a Gen Z fashion statement, we have fused our two, independent

The Inevitability of Heartbreak

Mid-way through lambing season, I am snapping out of our off-season operating mode.  We don't really take a season off, but the farm is relatively tame when the temperatures slow the growing process.  All of the sudden, with the announcement of Valentine, our St. Valentine's day

March- The Will to Live

It's just barely March and the trees have been triggered to bud and blossom.  Daffodils are smiling flamboyantly at the foot of the houses that May and I drive by en route to school.  Spring bulbs got the signal to start the show from both the soil which

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

February- Scraps

Throughout the week, I am collecting crusts from May and Jack's morning toast, the inevitable vestiges of a sourdough delight.  If I haven't eaten breakfast myself, I may make a meal of these remnants and a cup of black coffee.  They are my favorite bits of

The Long Way Round

The answer to all the inquiries about how we started Foxhole is that we took the long way. Like an epic road trip, we followed a course which wound its way from one foundational stop to another. Let's face it, we had no choice!  Being fresh out of

Jinxed

I didn't subscribe to the lore of the jinx until I married into the superstitious lot that's now my namesake.  I can sense all the wooden door frames and dinner table shudder when one of us is forecasting the future in our house.  Rich is always

Built to Survive

May and I made the drive down I-75 to deliver the week's retail orders this morning.  I made this same commute in reverse daily when I was pregnant with her five years ago, managing a non-profit farm north of town.  Then was the first time I remember shifting

If We Can Flip, We Can Flop

We're in flop mode-our January form.  After doing flips all spring, summer and fall to react to Mother Nature and grow for market, we are belly up.  It's a cycle which we have come to know intimately.  During the months that life is hot and active,

January 2023-Continuity

We all just weathered such a wild storm: a storm that apparently comes once a generation.  Are you thawed out?  Are the nerves in your fingertips still firing?   After the Christmas morning energy slowed to a lull with the kids pouring into their play, Rich ventured out to the hoop.

Dahoo Dores

Happy Holidays :)  Merry Christmas to those of you who grew up with an evergreen in the living room and your own "most special" Christmas traditions for which you waited all year to revisit.   This time of the year is so utterly sacred: reserved for a deep dive into

Is this the Last Time?

We left the farm last month and hit the refresh button.  My system upgraded and when I powered back up, I found myself recognizing the fleeting experiences we are living out.  May learned how to swim and I realized that I wouldn't be suiting her up in any

Why You Should Talk to Strangers

Maybe I should be including a warning here..."Warning: don't leave this journal entry open on your browser for young kids to see. Mutinous idea at play".  But I suppose that'd be highly hypocritical if the super sponges under my care are taken into

Surfacing in Siesta Key

Just last weekend the four of us farm rats found our way to the whitest sands of sunny Siesta Key.  I mean it when I say the whitest...I remember when my family and I visited this very beach; the layer of white, powdery sand accumulated after full days of

All the characters

May desires chapter books these days.  We read out loud on her bed while Jack gets stir-crazy, his two-and-a-half year attention span just can't hang until the end of the chapter, no matter the animation in my voice. Last month we finished Fantastic Mr. Fox...a story that

Contractually Obliged

Rich and I are most comfortable operating the farm independently of other organizations and individuals.  We really bask in the freedom and comfort of having our own agenda and no commitments other than to get our goods to market. Beyond our mortgage and our tractor payment, we are not '

"What Do You do for a Job?"

While Jack and I were swimming in carpet and Magnatiles the other day, he asked me that question.  He is nearing three and I suppose already his brain is firing with such curiousities.  That itself is a curiosity to me.  JOB?!  I know that he is very well immersed in

The Lion Heart of Small Business

Small business owners who stay in business are lions by nature.  This past week in particular I have felt very inspired by the bustling community that I'm proud to say we are tangled up in.  Most times, Rich and I prefer NOT to be bound up with other

November-Transcendance

I've been transported to some space that is not of this earth.  This has happened a few times in life, namely when I married Rich in the thick of strawberry season nearly ten years ago; there was also the experience I had when time stopped and Marion Rose

Another offer on our land

I'm not sure how typical it is to get at least one drive-by offer on your land a year.  Since we moved here in 2018, we have had a truck or two a season roll down the gravel drive to ask to farm our land or buy it.

Distance Makes the Heart Grow

Today was the last day of the Oakwood Farmers Market season.  Vendors and artisans brought their best to their tables and a lively energy permeated the parking lot tucked in the tree-lined streets of Oakwood.  It was a proper autumn day, kids with caps on their heads rolled by shivering

Flipping the Farm

Ian came when no one welcomed him and beckoned in an unexpected cold front for us midwesterners, turning a predicted warm October rather chilly.  That's hardly anything to complain about when flipping through photos of the havoc he wreaked in Fort Myers :(. Even so, he changed the game

October: Energy Exchange

I am allowing our geriatric lap top's battery to drain while I struggle to manifest my idea into words today: my brain fog is evidence of a diminished supply of energy myself.  But in this case, it's largely from the crescendo of a fall week: school