September: Where Are We Going?

It’s about this time of the year when we set our plans in motion for the overwintering of the farm. Now is the time to seed and transplant the last outdoor rotations and to ask ourselves…where are we going?
It’s been an unprecedented year for us. One we weren’t expecting, but the one that needed to happen. We slowed it down a bit to get our ducks in a row, take stock of what we could offer in a year with two toddlers and a body asking for healing. Nearly nightly conversations, just Rich and I, going over our status…farm/family/otherwise…led us to the realization that these first 3 years of Foxhole have been spent testing our limits on this piece of land, figuring out how to run our schedule and find efficiency, and to learn what our Dayton market wants. This in contrast to when we started this farm after years of farming for others, when we both believed we had THE plan…one that was hatched from years of experience and forethought. We’ve discovered that we are jjjjust now able to get a grasp on what our family needs from us, what we need from the farm, and how we can flow within the existing current of our community. Isn’t that just life? Taking your best laid plans and teaching you that they are only really there to be rewritten in keeping with the ever changing tides?
I’m really digging this new awareness of life as a nonlinear experience. Rather than stressing over plans gone off track, I’m embracing planning in a fluid manner…one that allows our plans to amount to a better reality than Rich and I could conjure up. I don’t mean to rain on the 5 year plan parade…that is surely a great exercise that is useful for getting up and running. But this more intuitive way of being allows us to take it day by day, keeping our eyes open to those wild card opportunities to grow in ways we didn’t imagine. And you better believe we are still regularly having our grand dream sessions…so many different projects we’d like to get into…perhaps maybe even one day that eatery of ours that we talk about with warm lights, wooden farm tables and cozy booths, warm sliced bread and crocks of butter…the best of the season being cooked up in the kitchen. But maybe Rich’s other dream will come true and we will ‘retire’ to a tropical place to farm fruits and fresh ginger!
Anyhow…where are we going? Right now we are heading into our last month and a half of regular market season for the year…pulling in big harvests these weeks. We are planning a full winter season of growing in the hoop house and our little grow house, with baking happening to boot. We’re looking forward to a good year next year…similar to this year…veggies galore, bread, granola, jellies, fun baking projects, time with the kids. We anticipate a new chapter beginning in 2023…one in which we have a bit more time and capital to expand on other farm projects, and quite possibly grow our crew to enable us to pursue those projects. We are laying that foundation for the farm…getting plugged into the community and learning how we want to grow before we set those wheels in motion. Yet while I type this all out, I realize that tomorrow one of those wild cards could present itself, sending us into a new chapter sooner than expected :).