December 31. 2019 Looking Back . . .. Going Forward

One of the negative aspects of being intentionally mindful of every day, rather than just letting time slip by un-noticed, is that time itself stretches out. Years (themselves) look like they did when I was eight years old. Will it ever be Summer? I can't wait for Fall! Etcetera . . . That sort of thing. One of other drawbacks is the thought that we're not getting enough accomplished to get the project of Creekside Farm done in any sort of reasonable time frame. We don't want to run out of energy, time, or money, before we get to where we are going.

Whenever I think we're moving too slowly, or at least taking too long, I look back at this journal and see what was happening on the same date in previous year's journal entries. I usually come away much more satisfied with our progress.

In January of 2014 we had just made our plans to buy a farm. We had no money, but part of the plan, (the dog business) was in the start-up process and we had just bought Clarke Bar Griswald.  We ended the year with delivery of our first litter of Basset pups. Money was on the way.

In January of 2015 we found the Farm (by accident), but still had no significant money. We bought it on contract in April. We bought it right and with great effort. Nothing was getting done on the property, but a great deal was accomplished just the same.Without money, progress was glacially slow. I was finished at Pacific and the basic plans for the property were in place. Much of the middle of 2015 was spent ferociously working our conventional jobs, trying to get the money to pay off the tax lean. Things were happening and we spent some cash on clean-up. I started keeping this journal the day we paid of the tax lean and the property was bought out of tax foreclosure.

By January 2016. we were birthing our third litter of pups and some money was available for the Farm.  We'd have two litters in 2016, and time to spend the money. We both still had our conventional jobs so time for the Farm usually was weekend work, but we spent whatever days we had, clearing, cutting, cleaning things up. We did little in the way of moving the project forward in 2016. Most of our time was tied up in birthing puppies and on our working jobs. But what money we got we spent of tractor rentals and dumping fees. At the end of the year we had figured out that we would need to "roll the dice" and gamble on our future. We began to build our tiny home. We spent the latter weeks of 2016 giving most of our things away and building the trailer. The Cabin moved to the Farm in the early days of Winter. We tilled our first soil in late 2016 as a side benefit of moving the tiny home cabin to the farm on a rainy Sunday morning. We needed a tractor rental to pull the Cabin into place and we opted for a roto-tiller attachment.

When January 2017 arrived we were moving to "Camp Creekside" and eating some of our cooked meals there. The place was looking good, in spots. We built a greenhouse in early Spring and began learning to plan food. The soils were weak, there was no watering system. But we ate good from the crops we planted that produced for us. After building a second tiny home to compliment the first, we found our Farm comfortable for living there by the early Summer. We put in a lot of fencing in 2017 and by the end of the year I was ready to leave my old business behind and go full time farmer.

2018 was very good for us. We had to put the Basset business on hold for a house build, but the paperwork for the farmhouse was on the way and our monthly bills were decreased greatly by moving to Camp Creekside and paying off everything that made sense. Ann's mother had passed on and she left behind a large chunk of money to Ann, which we got in the Spring. Things got a bit easier after this because we had money to make money with. We bought our tractor in the late Spring and things started getting big things done all around the place. By August we had renovated and sold our house in town for another large chunk of working capital. The future looked very bright and Camp Creekside turned into Creekside Farm.

We all know what happened in 2019. One thing after another happened which made our project a bit less shiny. Ann retired from her job in January and, since we had cleared up much of the place in 2018, we planned for a much more "farm-y" 2019. We tilled, toiled, and ultimately failed at vegetable farming, mostly due to a cold Summer and a rodent infestation which we ultimately resolved. In June a falling tree nearly killed us both. I spent the entire Summer out of commission but this catastrophe brought out the farmer in Ann and she blossomed (even if nothing else did). She was able to call in some very nice volunteer help and, undaunted by all of this, the last quarter of 2019 saw some very healthy progress. We began the building phase of Creekside Farm.

Last year the Farm nearly killed us, but not our spirit. We have been working at this since 2013, so it seems like we're moving slowly. But the Farm itself didn't really get started until 2017 and the money to actually build our plans didn't arrive until mid-2018. Washington County held us up for two years as well. but we are happy enough with the little we have achieved in the two years that things have really been moving along.  And we are building today. These thing take time.

The curve of our growth is as expected.
Even if it looks slow.