There is a blog post written that I was going to post just after Thanksgiving that will now go straight to the archives because it seems so incidental now. Why? Because just over a week ago, our house burned down. Thanks to a charging cell phone left on a chair, everything we own is now is in a dumpster and the house is beyond salvageable. I had to stand and watch, completely powerless, as our home and belongings went up in smoke. Tuesday afternoon, the day of the fire, we left the farm with the clothes we were wearing and nothing else.
Once again we find ourselves in crisis mode. It seems that we go from one to another and it leaves so very little time to appreciate the good times in between. There is good shining through this latest challenge though and that's the way our community is rallying around us. To be honest, I don't completely know what's happening out there is the real world, but I know there are efforts, primarily led by Laura, to try and help us. I am eternally thankful. But a little detached from it all. Partly because of the limitations on our internet use due to the loss of electronics and wifi and partly because I just can't face opening facebook or any other social media platform right now. I can see that there are 357 facebook notifications for me but I just can't go through them. It's not that I'm ungrateful, it's that I'm unable. Undoubtedly my communication shut-down a coping strategy that I will be out of soon. I don't know if I will ever respond to every message, tag or comment but know that we appreciate every single word you all have written and every effort you have made. You've delivered clothes, money, food and your support to us in abundance which we are so grateful for. I thought we would have been ok as we have insurance, but in truth we would have really struggled without your generosity. Insurance companies move slowly and only cover a percentage of what you loose and apparently I'm not great at covering the basics in a crisis. The night of the fire, the emergency response volunteers gave us $150 each to go to Walmart and buy a few clothes. I believed that I was shopping super smart. I thought I had picked up Jessica a few items of clothes that would mix and match really well to create the illusion of multiple outfits. I also thought I had made smart purchases for myself, clothing that I could wear to the farm but that would look ok away from the farm too. However, Wednesday morning came and Jessica went to school looking like Super Mario and I looked like the angry teenage son of a lumberjack in ill-fitting jeans, a Marvel t-shirt and plaid hoodie which I wore all day button up wrong!
I would love to talk about what happens next and how we will rise from the ashes, but all I know right now is that are living in two RV's on the farm for the foreseeable future and demolition of the house will begin shortly. After that I just don't know. I have to catch up with farming and the farm business. We were suppose to be in planning mode for next season. I'm wondering how we rebuild a house and our lives while managing the farming season too. Farm events are probably off the cards for next season, which was going to be our main focus, as the house is right in the middle of the farm and the place will be a building site for most of the summer events season. We're considering just picking one thing (farmers markets or CSA or something) and concentrating on that. We're also toying with the idea of establishing a farm cooperative to have more people involved in the running of the business, but that comes with challenges too. Maybe we'll hand the farming operations over to a Farm Manager, assuming we can find someone that enjoys being underpaid and over worked. We'll let you know as soon as we do.
Once again we are fighting for the farm and calling on our most resourceful selves to continue. If I'm honest, it has crossed our minds to leave this place; to rebuild and sell. In three short years, we have faced more adversity than some people deal with in a lifetime and we've questioned our ability to continue this quest.
In the meantime though, farm life goes on. Eight goats have been born in the last 20 hours, sadly three goats didn't survive. Five chickens and a duck have been killed by a raccoon and we're expecting a litter of piglets anytime, but there we go, that's the reality of farming. If anything in our lives is consistent, it's the unpredictability of what happens day-to-day on the farm. I'm now off to my neighbours to use her laundry as the few items of clothing I own are covered in blood, poo and placenta.
