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, our backs are almost always to the sky, bent over our work in the field and the wash basins in the wash and pack.  Then stretched over the market table every Saturday, overflowing baskets and our bakery case with abundance in the hopes it will go home with someone.  

But now, at the start of the new year, we flop.  We spend more time in repose in between tending the limited growing space, the animals, and stoking the woodstove.  Okay for those of you who know a bit about our reality: yes! we are baking all winter too: one of our strategies to cushion the blow of our low income season.  But truly, our bodies have the chance to lie on their backs or bums more than ever.  For better: board games and Lincoln Logs on the living room floor, sitting around the table for a while after a meal, late(r) night conversations on the couch with Rich: on life, on dreaming, on the latest in the world, on philosophy.  Or for worse ;): 2022 taxes, filling out the 2022 Farm Census, revamping the website, the nitty gritty of our annual farm record clean up, and ordering what we need for this season.  It's part of the job!  And so we power through it...no doubt feeling the need to rest our eyes after sitting on our tushes inside for so long staring at numbers.

Last week, accompanied by one of my best friends- a hot mug of black coffee which Rich roasts in the barn- I chronologically itemized the farm's expenses, reliving a year in our pocketbooks.  Proof (as if I needed it), of the imbalance of income and expenses as a small farmer.  January-March we find ourselves spending more than planned to set ourselves up to simply work the land and bring the fruits of our labor to market.  Between repairing or purchasing new machinery, stocking up on packaging and supplies, seeds and food for the soil: all the organic compost we can afford to buy from our friend Farmer Dan, potting mix ingredients which we mix ourselves throughout the year, marketing costs, etc, our accounts look as if we are on an extravagant horticultural shopping spree!  

We are a lot less wild in the spending arena than it may seem.  For by the time I reach the May receipts, I am rifling through so few.  The way our green season goes, we hardly have time enough to online shop once all the spring transplants are up and the field is dry enough to play in.  In all seriousness, I struggle to restock our bulk bags of Bobs Red Mill oats, the base to our granola, as my mind is run ragged after days in the field and keeping up with the kids.  

Hand in hand with less receipts are bulkier deposits in our accounts as we start to fill our market table to capacity at farmers market each week.  It's quite the relief when my handwriting is forced to shrink as spring gives way to summer and more items are added to our chalkboard menu.  And so we stretch and slowly reawaken our bodies, engaging core strength, firing our flexors, conditioning our backs and arms as we are called back to the field for the year.  Sayonara to the couch!

Like an old friend who we know well, spring comes to pull us out to the sun and the out of doors...where my head is always clearer and all my senses are reimbursed for months that they didn't smell flowers blooming or hear the choral crickets close down a day.  Once again you can expose enough skin to the sun to synthesize vitamin D and feel all the tingles that come along with that.  It's the euphoria of all this which acts as hypeman to take us into the grand energy expenditure of somersaulting through summertime.  

Until then, I've learned to value-no! to pencil in-the winter flop that every full-time farmer needs.  Time for an extra mug of coffee with a book in the afternoon, giving Jack my full playmate energy while he misses May at school, the spontaneous excursion with our gang, and looking Rich deep in the eyes after I almost forget what color they are during our busy season.

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 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 :).