Mood Swings

We are in the throes of our first summer back after our enforced hiatus. We're finally back. And boy, are we ever back with a bang!

Around me, I'm watching friends and fellow farming folk struggle. There seems to have been a wave of people announce they are reducing their farming commitments. Why? Well I'm not sure what the root cause is, probably because this is hard and unforgiving work and the kind of personalities that face up to the challenge suck at self care.

But I'm watching this feeling removed. Not unsympathetic. It's a kind of "oh yeah, we went through that too" reflection and empathy, but actually we're doing pretty great this season and I'm loving this ridiculously crazy summer. I'm relishing seeing the farm alive with people again. The kids camps, the workshops and the amazing, colourful events are lighting up my soul again. Most of all, seeing people's reactions to the vibrancy of the food we produce is nourishing me to my core. I feel like I'm coming out of a fog and there are the first tingles of joy again.

BUT (there's always a but), we are not out of danger yet. The future of the farm is still in jeopardy and this season will either set us up for a great future or it will be our swan song.

Although my physical and mental health is beginning to repair for the first time since the fire in 2016, Ian is struggling to sustain the immense energy it takes to keep this show on the road. Financially the fallout from the fire remains devastating and the onus to fight the corporations responsible for our downfall  and chase the legal team tasked with representing our interests has been with him. It's so frustrating to feel like the ones wronged but have to continually relive the trauma and chase and fight and bulldoze our way to closure. So many times over a 3 year period, we have been led to believe that closure is coming only to have some corporation or anonymous lawyer somewhere think up another needless "requirement" with the true purpose being to waste time. Time that means nothing to them but has meant a rollercoaster of emotion and uncertainty to us. I've lost count of how many times we have said "we're done" only to claw our way to some kind of self-made reprieve. And it's only Ian's tenacity and determination that has kept us at the farm this long....that kind of living is detrimental to a person's wellbeing.

So the current situation is this. We have 3 mortgages. We need to earn $14,000 a month just to get by and that sure as heck ain't farmers income! We've been working, grafting and hustling to make it. We believed it would not have gone on this long but we cannot sustain it much longer. We think there will be some resolution by the end of September. But we've heard that before. Deadlines are ten a penny and only seem to matter to us, not the corporate world, not the lawyers, just the little guy who has their whole life invested in a resolution.

October will be our D-day. Either this whole fiasco will be resolved or we're out. And we will walk away from our home and livelihood with very little to show for it...financially anyway...we'll have a plethora of good dinner-party stories.

Come October, whatever happens, wherever the dice fall, the one takeaway for me will be the lack of humanity in our world. The story of how corporate greed robbed us of a brighter belief in the world and our farm.

Dear Mr Judgeypants, I am an attention seeker, it's my responsibility!

Dear Mr Judgeypants,

This is to the men who left negative comments on our World Naked Gardening Day photos.

You are right. I am an attention seeker. But here is why that is not a negative thing, or a representation of the state of humanity. :) It's my responsibility as a woman and a farmer.

I don't know where, when or why World Naked Gardening Day became a thing. When I first heard about it in 2016, I initially decided we would do it as a promotional aid, nothing more. We are a small-scale, family run farm and we were heading into a busy season. I figured it might get us a few Facebook page likes and then that translates into more exposure for us to use as a selling aid. I admit it, that was shallow. But since then, we have made a habit of publishing our naked photos and the drivers behind it have grown...as have I. I have learned a lot.

Bringing new traffic to our page is still an incentive, but for different reasons. For sure this stunt increases our social media following every year. I know that is not a way to measure anything that really matters in life, but those people who show up on our social media for naked photos then stay for the conversation, education and engagement. We talk a lot about important issues for farming and the planet. On our pages, you'll find things like regenerative agriculture articles, myth-busting about farming, videos on how to become a better consumer, info on soil and water conservation, ethical animal raising and so on. So, you see, it's not just about getting people to look at me, it's about getting people to look at the issues that face all of us as farmers, members of the agricultural community, consumers and humans living on a dying planet. It's about advocacy and ease. The people who see us in our most vulnerable state, know that our community is a safe space to ask any question. No middle-aged, white, wobbly woman who has been naked on the internet is going to berate anyone for asking a silly question!

But that's not the prevalent issue anymore. I've learned a lot about women, and our place in society.

Since starting this in 2016, I've had trauma in my life. That hasn't just manifested in my emotional well-being, but also in my physical self. Each year I get fatter as the medication I take to help me deal with the trauma makes my appetite hard to manage and the depression I dealt with for 2 years made me pretty inactive. I'm not telling you this so you'll sympathize with me, I'm telling you this in the hope that you will try to empathize with all women. Lots of the comments left on our photos include things like "they are so brave" and "wow, what confident ladies". This makes my heart hurt for womankind. No one would think or write this if we were size 2, 23-year-old beauties in a glossy magazine and they definitely wouldn't feel the need to refer to a man in the buff of any age or size as "brave". What women are saying is that we don't conform to the societal norms of beauty and so we must be congratulated for our "bravery" for stepping out as our true selves in a judgmental world. But we are the norm. We do represent what happens to women's bodies in realty. I really want to see a year of naked gardening photos in the future when no one thinks to use the word brave for me either. That will be a measure of equality and body positivity and a healthy society, don't you think?

I overheard a group of teenage girls talking about their fear of beachwear recently. These girls will never be as taught, wobble-free and beautiful as they were at that time when they were talking about a fear of their bodies been seen. For goodness sake, if that doesn't promote the need for women of all ages and sizes to take ownership of their bodies and celebrate the beauty within our too big or too small bottoms, our saggy boobs or our small boobs, our fat thighs or our thigh gaps, our sprouting body hair, our knobbly knees or our bunion-ridden feet, then I don't know what it will take. We don't need every woman to get naked, but we do need some women to show us that we can - and we definitely need every man, woman and child to stop negatively judging.

It's not easy to just become confident and comfortable in our bodies when we are constantly judged against unachievable aspirations of beauty and worthiness. So good on the "attention seekers". Those women that stood with me all represent the message...."we are too old and too good for this shit".

Yours,

Cathy.

P.S. Who wants to organize a naked gardening parade just to piss Mr Judgeypants off?

The Drama Farmers

It's been a year since the last time I took the time to sit and write a blog post. So many reasons for that. First of all, the last update informed you we were done here. We couldn't recover from the fire and a plethora of other dramas that were unraveling around us. At the time of writing that, there were asteroid-sized challenges flying at us from every direction, they took our legs out from beneath us and left us lying winded on the metaphorical cold, hard ground. While closing felt like our only feasible option at the time, the decision broke us. We continued to fight our own battles, sometimes completely exposed in the eye of the media, as well as some very private struggles with mental health. But we could not reconcile closing the farm.

A year later and hardly any of those issues have been completely resolved, but we are stronger. We spent most of 2018 taking back control of our situation. So, while we still await some resolution and closure of the ongoing issues, we are at least back in control of our financial and emotional well-being in the meantime. Despite, or should I say IN SPITE of the trauma and the failures of others, we are stronger, more stable and able to say the farm will re-open this year.

I know what you're thinking.....we're on, we're off, we're back, we're done....you never know what drama is coming next from this 5 acre corner of Langley that most people love to visit, but has been the stage of much misery for us. What can I say? Thank you springs to mind. Thank you for sticking with us. Thank you for coming back when we tentatively reopened the farm store at the end of last year. Thank you for buying our entire annual stock of beef within 20 minutes of it arriving back at the farm. Thank you for signing petitions, leaving online reviews, referring your friends to us, but most of all, encouraging us. It is the people that surround us and the farm, that circled the wagons, and that keep us going.

We have moved into our new hemp house now and many of you have visited or seen the house now. It's a beautiful space to live in and having a stable base for the first time in the two years since the fire has definitely contributed to stabilizing us. We've been able to make space in our own minds to think about re-opening the farm and what that model should look like. We have to be mindful of the problems we have had with our farming model in the past. We've analyzed the key messages and think we have found a balance, both for ourselves and to improve our regenerative farming approach.

So here's the plan. Baby steps! 2019 will see us both working away from the farm to help with some financial stability and easing back into our farming story. We will drop all the restaurant supply, CSA programs and farmers markets that we were doing before. The farm will be open on Saturdays from May through to October and employ just Ian and I. There will be kids camps, farm tours, meat and (limited) produce sales, workshops and events, as well as a new botanical garden and tannery with help from Mara of Crow's Nest Wildcraft. We have also been taking some bookings for private functions. Basically, we are eliminating anything that takes us away from the farm and focusing on the farm becoming the destination again.

We feel excited. It's the first time in a long time we find ourselves looking forward to something farm related. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for at least one drama-free season!

We'll see you in May.