Thanksgiving at Creekside Farm is a simple thing. We sit for dinner, as most do, and contemplate our good fortunes. This post will be a retrospective on our year and not a recounting of the month as is usual. Occasionally I like to recount an entire history of the Farm and this is a possibility as I begin to write, but I will try to be brief and keep things relatively on point. To this end I must say the generally this year has been very good to us, but not without a some spill over of drama from outside, both good and bad. We began the year with our world in a pandemic lockdown, a newly elected President, a horrific revolt against the government.
Our world seemed in turmoil and I wondered how far Trump, the traitorous ex-president, would take it. I wondered how much war I make at my age. But things never went that far. Political things have slackened off, but not without qualifications, which I will not go into since it really is not Farm related.
The year has been a financial success even though Farm production was not really involved. We had two litters of Basset pups, both litters sold within days of birth and all of the new parents are ecstatic with their new fur babies. The financial gains from these two litters allowed bills to be paid, but there was other income as well. We decided to take our Social Security retirement at sixty-two because the numbers were right and full retirement had been raised to sixty-seven. And there were a number of large chunks of cash, doled out by the government, intended to stimulate the economy and assuage the negatives of the pandemic. We had a barrel of cash when moving to the Farm three years ago, but our long ranged planning included income to keep things level. The year brought us good fortune and we became self sufficient this year. But our long ranged planning requires farm production income to succeed and we made some large moves in that direction this year.
Since we are not yet settled on the sort of farming we will do in order to be successful farmers, but not knowing what this means in action, we continued to experiment with the sorts of plans and practices that might make our farm work successfully. As this past year began we continued to work withing the bounds conventional organic farm practices. Tilling the soil, making compost, bringing compost in, and pushing the dirt into rows before planting seeds and starts, all seemed the right way to do things. And we had some success, but it was our crop of peppers that proved the only worthwhile thing we did. Once more we didn't reach the point where we could open a roadside produce stand or take things to a Farmer's Market, so we took what we did grow to local food banks. In July we decided to get some outside advice to move things forward.
A nice woman from the USDA came out to survey our farm and discuss USDA subsidies to build infrastructure. She gave us some wonderful advice and described how we might go about things, but none of this advice seemed right for the level of development we have. One of the things that came of this visit was an invitation for Ann to go to a class on cover cropping in the off season. I had been spending some time learning how to make good compost, but reading a book Ann received at this class opened some new possibilities to explore. In the end we decided to begin building a "no-till" farm and this led into procuring hundreds of yards of hardwood leaves to make into leaf compost, leaf mulch, and leaf mold. The Farm looks a bit of a mess today because hauling the leaves around is a messy and muddy affair. And I won't go into how these things work together to make soil until it works, or does not, but the system sounds about right and we look forward to our attempt at farming in the coming year. Farming is the second business we had planned, the first being our dog breeding business as described above. So, while we are able to stay on the Farm even without farm income, production of sellable farm produce is our chief concern, second only to finishing the farmhouse in immediate importance.
We have nearly finished the Farmhouse we began to build two years ago. At the beginning of the year we had raised the frame, put a temporary roof and siding on, and wrapped the whole place in a weather resistant layer. During the year we wired, insulated, and finished the interior walls. We also put the exterior siding and finished the roof. There is still the exterior porch to build and the exterior of the house still needs painted, but plans are in place and we hope to get all but the painting done in Winter. We will move from our tiny home to the new Farmhouse in the next few weeks and celebrate Christmas in warmth there. One thing we are very thankful for is a long hot shower, but there was much more that happened, and did not happen, this past year. Things are generally going forward fairly well. Objects will come up to block our plans, but as in the past we will find a way around whatever we find. The Farm has a schedule which our careful plans fit into, but only in a general way.
In the coming year we will attempt once more to make a profit on farm produce, finish the house, birth two more litters, move our new kennel into place, and begin producing things to sell in service of our long termed goals. All of these plans will be guided by the weather and the world's need for what we can make of the gifts we have and we look forward to finding out how we did when Thanksgiving comes around once more. But this past year showed us much and gave us much more than we expected, even if less than we hoped for. The thanks we give is for the help we received in making our plans work and not to plans that failed. We have had, now have, and will have, much to be thankful for as time marched forward.
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