The inherent risks of farming

I'm almost finished reading a book called Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works by Atina Diffley.

It's roughly about a family who are always either at risk of losing their land to development, or trying to catch up to their dreams on faith and intuition.  So I'm nearing the end of this thing, daydreaming on the porch with my mothers' day flowers in their pots when it hits me.  All gardening/farming comes with risk.  Crop failure, market conditions, etc.  But what struck me was this realization:

Fear of losing another piece of my heart to land I don't own has been stalling me.  Our souls were wrapped up in the land at my Grandmother's place and it was heartbreaking to watch it hemmed in by development, then essentially repossessed by circumstances.   I thought I had been waiting to own land initially.  Now I know that I've been holding out for earth that can't be suddenly taken with no notice or empathy.  Same thing, different way of looking at it.

Yet the more agricultural narratives I read, I notice that so many people are putting their everything on the line with no security that they will even be able to harvest.  I cried reading about the little boy in the book who stood at the edge of the bulldozer scrape and howled while they erased the fields he knew. 

That's how I felt.  I wanted to tear down the barbed wire at the homestead with my bare hands when I saw it go up on my little hill.  All I felt after it was installed was the pressure of something that shouldn't exist, pushing... and the bare earth where the apple orchard I'd grown up in had been gouged clean.  The sunset had even been stolen when the warehouse went up at the west property line.  A line of herbicide burned down the vines that had shyly crept up in my defense against that damned fence. 

So there it was.  There was the reason I've been afraid to just DO THIS RIGHT NOW.  Not fear of getting in trouble, but fear of losing my heart again. 

The minute I realized this, I suited the boys up with gloves while Jack napped and we went around the fence to the abandoned lot.  I started kicking giant rhubarb leaves to warn anything crawly I was coming and just began ripping everything out by the roots.  It must have been satisfying because before I realized it, I'd cleared nearly the whole yard. 

Jake and Jude were in heaven, hauling vegetation to the side for me, scouting for snakes and spiders, pulling out grass and tossing bottles.  It must have felt like home for them, too.  Like it used to be, before our homestead was cut off.  When they'd follow behind their Dad and me gathering cut grass and helping to move logs and boulders.  The glory of leaping up and stretching my body to reach dead branches as I cleared a sunny patch was heaven. 

Watching my sons bravely haul things 'too big' for them was good medicine for us all.  We vinagered poison ivy, tossed trash and scrounged the yard for lumber and bricks to frame the garden.  Even found a few buckets to help haul.  Jake documented everything with the phone, commenting like a reporter.  Jude kept saying,"Here mommy... lemme git dat for ya."  "Here, here.  No, I got it.  Don't worry about it."  I saw the freedom come back into their eyes this morning.

When we finished, the yard was able to be walked through and a sunny patch torn out of the canopy.  A modest raised bed now lies there looking tired and happy in its sun patch, waiting for us to come again tomorrow.  My arms and legs are scratched and my body aches with satisfaction.

I feel home.

Hot-wiring the ignition

So I think I broke my friends' weedwhacker.  It went back home and never returned.  It didn't even write.

That potential property owner never got back with me, either.  Still no leads on how to contact the current scumball. 

After another talk with my property manager, he's still convinced raised beds will lower the property value on CPO's lots.  I think it's pretty obvious there that he just doesn't want the perceived hassle.  Look buddy, the rubbermaid tubs I'm picking up to fill are going to look a lot worse than a lovely little garden bed but suit yourself.

Ah, and I totally blew the opportunity to talk to the heads of CPO, CMHA and the mayor earlier this week at the CPO 10th anniversary film premier at the Lincoln Theatre.  (Which I starred in, thankyouverymuch ;)   Mom duty called, and I'm trying to comfort myself with the fact that at least they'll know my name when I try to set up a meeting about my ideas.  Plus, Jude was adorable carrying his baby sheep in the big posh space.  Fit right in with the suits and gowns.  Pah.... moving on...

"Your dream doesn't have an expiration date."

Hello, and welcome to the beginning of whatever is going to happen here!

After a REALLY long time of preparing to buy some land and get going with our plans... we decided we had to stick around Weinland Park a little while longer.

Last week after talking with the lender I had my heart broken when I realized we couldn't responsibly accept their loan terms, and we would have to wait to get out of the city.  After all the preparation, the late nights planning and studying, the networking.. the EVERYTHING... I felt like my boat had blown up and I was sinking.  With my boys, no less.  The disgust I felt at living here another year was all I could think about.

The morning after my talk with the lender, I was making breakfast for the boys and looking out the back door into the yard next door.  There's this awful rotten building next to mine that's been essentially vacant for at least the 7 years I've been here.  The yard is just caked with all the funk it's been filter-feeding from the fairgrounds, campus, the railroad and the freeway.  Glass, twisted wires, trash, construction detritus...poo.  You name it.

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself thinking,"My god I can't do this another year.  I can't take this boxed-in feeling, afraid that the boys are going to wander in there and get hurt.  I have all these ideas and no dirt to conceive them in.  Our window can't HOLD any more plants!!!  I'm a failure to my kids!  They're going to pick up terrible behaviors and end up in prison with Max from A Goofy Movie!"

So I'm having my panic pity party, glaring over the fence at that yard and I began to think,"How dare that man neglect a perfectly good piece of earth?  Who is he to keep it locked away when I would give Wayne Newton's left index finger for even that much space to work with?"

Then it hit me... (insert Grinch grin)

I decided that I'm not going to wait for a space of our own to start my super secret squirrel business plans that I've been brewing for 4 years now.  I'm just gonna have to nudge some elbow room out of this city, and I'm not going to spend another warm season feeling like my boys are playing in someone else's livingroom when they're outside.  Or toilet for that matter. (yuck.)

One of my inspirations for truly believing this is possible is a writer named Jenna Woginrich.  She had this mindset that once she made a goal, it pretty much had to happen if her life and choices revolved around that focus.  I also picked up this crazy idea that sometimes it just can't hurt to ask.  For permissions, or help, or negotiated circumstances.  Well, so far it's been working.

I put my plan out there.  To take over that awful property, clean it up and try to coax something to grow over there.  Funny thing about humans... we like to be in on a good plot.  You know what happened?    That same day one person offered me all her old gardening tools, and another family just happened to have a weed whacker someone had given them the day before.

Then yesterday I ran into the potential new property owner, who was actually thrilled at my proposal since it will take a LONG time for the building to be habitable.  Win/win situation.  He gets a beautiful yard for future renters, and I get a greenspace for this season...