Just Who Do I Think I Am?

Hi.

I'm Kelsey, co-owner of a farm that technically doesn't even exist yet. Fun right?

You may be thinking "why am I even reading this then?" Welllllll....

Beats me friend. Carry on!

Anyway, I have been gardening and dreaming of a future farm for years, and FINALLY this year, in the middle of a pandemic, pregnancy, and crazy election year, we are making it happen. Ha..Ha, we aren't crazy, you're crazy...ehem.

Currently we grow our fruits and veggies in a 20'x25' plot (bed? Can we really even call that space a plot? Whatever, I'm doing it.). Our little garden has been very productive over the last few years, and we are constantly experimenting with ways to make it even better. We start most of our seedlings inside under grow lights because our growing season is short, but sweet AND because I get really impatient for fresh growth come Feb/March.

Since we currently live in the top portion of a duplex, we don't actually have a basement to set up such an operation. Have you ever set up your grow lights in your kitchen/dining area? It's fun. You get all sorts of spicy looks from your neighbors who see the bright purple glow from your windows and assume you are much more exciting than you actually are. Just tomatoes Sharon, sorry to disappoint. On top of our garden and wild indoor grow operation, we also own 12 wacky laying hens, 2 outrageous, but friendly roosters, the best, laziest, and most handsome black lab you've ever met, and 2.5 (see pregnancy) crazy small humans.

The land that we are signing on shortly is approximately 28 acres...so you know...just a teeny increase. The land is AWESOME. It's probably not what most people look for when starting a market garden, but it has tons of variety in it's landscape, big rocks and trees for feral children to climb, and juuust enough level space for us to start really building on a dream that has been in the making for years.

Building a house needs to come first. It turns out that housing your small humans is super important, but realistically that gives us a full season to really observe the land so that we can choose the correct spot to plant our market garden. This is something we are pretty thankful for. Permaculture is something that my husband and I really believe in and strive for, so having the time to really study the land before diving in is great.Observe, observe, observe. Plus we can always throw in some cover crops and start prepping our soil as we plan all of our future endeavors out.

Our hope with this property is that we can establish our gardens and then start to hold workshops and community events. Getting the community around us involved in learning to grow their own food, and just building community ties in general is very important to us. We want people to come visit our farm. We want people to be comfortable there, to bring their kids there, and to find true enjoyment just being in nature.

Laying it out so that people know it exists will be tricky, but I really hope for the ability to have a nice farm stand someday as well. I want it to be all the bright, vibrant colors that my husband for some reason isn't interested in painting the house...whatever.

Anyway, until then we will be building up our garden here, driving around like creeps looking at other peoples siding, layout, and window choices, and dreaming of the day when we can really dig into a property we plan on staying for a while.

Thanks for reading along friend. We appreciate you and hope you'll be stopping by the farm someday!

Love,

Kelsey & Jon