LAST CALL AT THE BARn

Fire, flood, drought, disease, debt and disaster. Sounds like the first line of a poem but is, in fact, a synopsis of my farming career. And it is time to call it a day.

Most of you will already know that we have had a disproportionate amount of things happen to us since we moved here in 2013. While it's normal to have challenges, we have had to fight for the survival of the farm following a major incident around 3-5 times a year. That's an exhausting way to live. It chips away at your resilience. It's time.

We haven't really been able to recover from the 2016 fire. Financially, we are still struggling to find a resolution with the big corporation whose device started the fire and have recently taken on HUGE personal debt (again) to keep going. The personal cost to us for uninsured loss has been catastrophic and there has also been an almost daily battle just to get the things we were entitled too. Emotionally, we are still struggling - mainly with the personal resource required that continually fighting and repeatedly having to relive the fire every time we call or email the people who should be making this right! I would like to live this year in a way that doesn't require medication to keep me going. And schedule...we are still rebuilding when we should be farming. It's time.

On top of that there have been additional and significant changes occur, all of which came together and totally disrupted our existing business plans. These events left us looking at a million different scenarios focused on both keeping the business going and folding it. Eventually we realized that all of the options were crappy! Getting out is now just as hard as keeping going as we have invested so much in new websites, business cards, t-shirts, equipment, seed, etc. We have sold CSA shares, event tickets, etc that will all need to be refunded. But going on is next to impossible too regardless of the plethora of ideas for change we have run. We find ourselves caught between a rock and a hard place. It's time.

When you realize there is no preferably way to proceed, that there is no sensible plan or easier path, it becomes quite liberating. It's at this point you can let go of thinking about the business and just focus on what is right for your family. I am not strong enough to do what needs to be done to rewrite the business model and find people to get on board with us at this point in the season. Ian is drained with the battle too. He is the strongest, most resilient and reliable man on the planet, he's my absolute rock, so to see him bruised, battered and battle weary hurts my heart. Our kids don't really care! Not because they are heartless human beings but because they have become emotionally self-sufficient  due to us being so removed by the trauma, toil and tragedy of the farm. That's not ok. It would be one thing to continue if I believed that things would get better, but I don't. I cannot knowingly continue to fail them at this crossroads in pursuit of farming. It's time.

I am not special or more entitled than any one of you reading this. I can only expect the same from life that everyone else gets. I am not a religious person, or particularly spiritual. My life is fairly black and white usually. But I do now believe that for whatever reason, this was not meant to be. This is a sudden decision in as much as we were talking to chefs and customers about the season just 48 hours ago. However, we knew this year was our 'do or die' year. The year we had to turn things around and here we are at the end of January with every last option snatched from our reach. And it's frustrating because it should have worked! Our business plan and financial forecast showed a strong year, but fate it beyond our control. It's time.

There are lessons to be spoken and commentary to be made. There are 'thank yous' to be said. But not now, we just have to reel for a little bit before we can collect our thoughts and strength and let all our farm supporters how much we have appreciated them. It's time.

Turning Tides?

I have started this post so many times and had to abandon it mid-page, and that is a reflection on the rapid changes in our situation and the way we feel from one day to the next. I left the last post amidst a crisis that was starting to look like the end for Laurica Farm. That 'end' has come and gone several more times. We've found ourselves at the absolute edge of what we can control, we have even called the Realtor to list the property more than once, and then something, some little glimmer of hope has emerged on the horizon and we would step back from the precipice, sometimes just for an hour before the next wave came. But we've gingerly been inching back from the edge for about two weeks now so maybe it's time to write some of this down.

There is no need to tell you every detail and change, there have been some hairy times as you can imagine....like when we had $25 in our bank account on Saturday and our mortgage payment was due on Monday. There's been significant changes in attitude, not so much for me, I can have fifteen different life goals in a day, but Ian who is a careful and methodical thinker commented when he was finishing siding on the barn that he was "getting the place ready to sell" -  believe me, that's a big deal for him to say something like that. But in brief it's been a long interaction with banks and insurance companies, building departments and engineers. And now, largely thanks to Ian's tenacity and patience, we are in a much stronger, and more positive position.

The practical side looks like this; we have negotiated a much better settlement with our insurers. As well as Ian's efforts, Bethany and her team, the insurance representatives at local level have been in our corner the entire time. We are extremely grateful to them, without them I suspect we would have not been heard by the decision-makers. We can now afford to build a new house which was not the case before. And thanks to Ian McClean, our brilliant architect, we have an exciting design. We've had the opportunity to practice with some of the materials we want to use in the house as we've refurbished the barn in to a funky new event venue and built the living space in the tree house.

But with something new comes new challenges, and of course we are not choosing the easy route with the house. We've spent the last four years talking to anyone who visits the farm about sustainability. We've talked the talk and now we have to step up to the plate and walk the walk. Even putting aside our own thoughts and feelings on what we want our house to be, how can we look you, the thousands of people who have toured our farm, in the eye and build a house that is anything other than THE MOST sustainable house? We can't. And we won't. So, after copious research we are trying to build a hempcrete house (please take two minutes to watch this short clip on hempcrete). Again, I'll try and surmise the challenges. Although hempcrete is widely used in Europe and Australia for both residential and commercial developments, it's not an approved material in Canada. There is a mass of data on the material but we need an envelope consultant to sign off on it. So far, two envelope consultants have sat on it for four weeks and then advised us that it's not an approved material in Canada.....very frustrating as that is the basis of us employing them! Anyway, we think we have found someone progressive who is willing, and dare I say excited, to work with us on this project. The hempcrete debacle has been really annoying. It's not like we are trying to build some wacky design with wattle and daub. This is a regular, modern looking home with a tried and tested material that happens to be a really good thing for the environment. It should be exciting for a professional and municipality to be showcasing, especially when the build happens on a very public farm, but I guess that requires stepping out of a box and maybe some independent thought - oh the horror!!!! Anyway, our battle is not over yet but we are starting to dust off our victory flag.

Some rather significant practical victories that have allowed us to take a minute and exhale. Now it's time to think about the emotional side. It's time to recognize that despite my conviction when I recite "I'm fine, we're all fine, everything is fine", it hasn't been fine at all. We are not fine. I don't know whether the fire is the root of my trauma or whether it was the episode that allowed me to stop and fall to my knees for a little while. I suspect it was the straw that broke the donkeys back and on reflection maybe I started last years farming season with burn out.

But it's ok not to be ok after what we've been through over the last 4 years. As we heal our farm and home, we have to take the time to heal ourselves too, and maybe the new build will be cathartic for us. Maybe it'll give us the strength and motivation to breath life back into the farm business next year. Maybe it won't and then we'll know it's time to go and do something else. But whatever happens, we thought we had lost control of that decision, but we've reclaimed our power and whatever happens from here on in is our own fate, the outcome of our own input as opposed to outside influences redirecting our life path. That we can deal with.

Ian and I have felt every EXPOSED!

Subsidizing my farming habits

Every cloud has a silver lining, but sometimes you have to adjust your focus to see it.

This blog was always suppose to be about our transition into rural bliss. It has been hijacked by farming and financial drama and so far, bliss has eluded us. In my last post I talked about a substantial withdrawal from a majority of our farming activities while we rebuild, regroup and re-evaluate. A number of things have happened since then that have helped us focus on our ultimate rural-bliss goals.

First, we moved out of the RV's that housed us over this unusually tough Canadian winter, and into the treehouse that we have toiled over. Thank Goodness for Ian! What a trooper. While I assumed my position of apprentice and clean-up crew again, he transformed the underside of our existing tree house from a storage shed into a beautiful home. We will live here while we rebuild, and we're happy to do so. Moving in here and feeling the transition in my mood took me back to my days in social work. After visits to small, dingy, dark & inadequate homes, we often used to theorize on how environment, specifically housing, could impact a persons ability to make positive changes in their life. Moving into the small but gorgeous tree house lifted me and gave me the energy to look forward. I could even go as far as seeing passed the house rebuild to a time when we could rent this lovely space, an additional income that could cover half our monthly mortgage payments. The majority of the cost of this treehouse refurbishment has been covered by the emergency living fund from the insurance. Continuing to rent RV's would have been dead money but we've managed to turn it into an asset for the farm, and ourselves.

Of course, just because we can see financial incentives in the future, doesn't eradicate money troubles now, and once again, we've had to hustle. Ian hasn't had full-time employment since the fire and now that we have reduced our farming activities, we have cut our earning potential. We're no strangers to picking up casual and sometimes obscure work to make ends meet, and we certainly aren't work shy. Ian has been working nights salting roads and parking lots during this cold spell. In the meantime, I have had to take a serious look at where my time is most valuable. The outcome of that is that I should go back to work outside of the farm, with a view to easing the immediate financial challenges but also to relieve some of the pressure that will allow Ian to stay here and build the house over the summer.

So, I now have a job....and a home....like normal folk! Tomorrow I don pink and black scrubs and walk in as the new girl at a Wellness Clinic. A clean, sterile environment a world away from the daily animal poop encounters of the farm.

What does this mean for the bliss journey? It means we can continue to farm the livestock and look at manageable models for 2018. It means I can eventually subsidize my goat and piglet buying addiction. It means I can see us reaching our goal. Just imagine for a moment duel income, a rental income and a farming business of some description. It could enable us to stay here for good or give us the freedom of choice. Say, for example, we can keep living here for the next 10 years, we could potentially sell and walk away to a mortgage-free/debt free life with money in our pockets from the equity in the land. Ian would be 52, I'd be 48 and the girls will be 26 and 19. That's an appealing retirement plan!

The journey to us finding our bliss continues to snake its way up this rocky mountain road. The plans change with each hairpin bend in the road and the steep incline continues to demand every ounce of energy and commitment we can throw at it. Maybe it's taken disaster to make me realize that the road isn't paved with farming, maybe farming is just on the sidewalks?  But I can see the peak of the mountain now, for the first time, and it looks reachable.

The final breakdown

I'm writing this post before I change my mind. It's like a real-time update if you will. It's going to sound mopey and mauldling, but please do not post sympathy comments. You see, it is New Years Eve 2015 and I am mid breakdown. And I can't decide if it's a real 'beginning of the end' episode or if it's a 'end of the beginning' process.

Let me set the scene. As I mentioned it's new years eve. I had purchased a family ticket to the festivities on Grouse Mountain. But, I am sick so have sent mia familia off to enjoy themselves. There's certain factors playing into my perceived breakdown that aren't farm related at all. Sickness, for example. I keep having to stop & curl up in the fetal position while waves of stomach pain wash over me. My loving husband was unable to fulfill my requests of medicine and supplies because he could not stop working on the greenhouse in time to go to the store. I am also without any means to light the wood burning stove (it's going down to -7 tonight) so I am confined to the bedroom, the only room with any other form of heating.

I was actually in a rather calm state of mind as everyone left, quite relieved to suffer alone. However, I got up to try and light the fire and had a bout of stomach pain at the same time. The combination of the pain, profuse sweating, the no-fire predicament and the aloneness bought on unexpected wailing that, quite frankly, I was unprepared for. You see, it was not just a sob but consisted of loud cries of "I've had enough, oh god, I've had enough"....repeatedly.

What is going on with me?! Two scenarios present themselves to me.

The Beginning of the End: I have to confess that I've been struggling with the 'why we are here' dilemma. 2015 has been a great year for the farm in many aspects; achievements, recognition, awards, events, new products, new ventures, etc. but it has also been another extremely challenging year in other ways: the ongoing well issues, drought, the loss of animals, ongoing financial challenges, relentless work and relationship difficulties with my oldest daughter. I've used two analogies to summarize all this recently. The first I think I've heard somewhere before and I've adapted. I told Laura that my life is like a bar stool. 4 legs, and each one represents part of my life. Finance, Family, Work & Health. Again this year we struggled with money, family life is difficult, work is unmanageable, and although our health is generally good, we are having some challenges with our well-being too. A stool cannot stand up with all it's legs broken.

The second analogy relates to Ian, my incredible hard working and long suffering husband. Again, something I think I've heard before and plagiarized but living with Ian, a type-A, perfectionist and workaholic, is not always easy, despite the fact that I love him very much. I sometimes feel like he is driving along in a truck and I am not in the passenger seat but hanging on by my finger tips to the window. Sometimes I slip back to the tail gate and have to claw my way back to the window, but I still can't quite make it into the cab. It's great to have a motivated and ambitious husband but with all this hanging on, I'm getting bruised. I'm gathering scar tissue and I'm not sure I will ever take a comfortable seat as his passenger or if I'll just find myself struggling to keep up forever.

The next scenario is less negative, The End of the Beginning. 2 years and 5 months we have lived here and in Ian's very modest words "We've built an empire". It's true, we need to give ourselves credit for what we've achieved, how we've hung on to our values and the compromise we've endured. We have faced road blocks at every turn but here we are, writing our business plan for 2016. Things have to be easier next year. We will have more people involved in the running of the farm, a team that I'm excited about. This winter we are finishing off building projects, fencing and roofing. We are nearly done so that pressure will be relieved. Last year we finished installing our walk-in fridge 1 day before the meat chickens were due to be processed. In fact, we were still finishing the chickens coop as they arrived! The pressure was constantly on, everything was last minute, we lived life on a knife-edge. This year, there won't be any of that....hopefully. Maybe I like the chaos? Perhaps I'm mourning not having the chaos as an excuse and I have to pretend I know what I'm doing. I'm still a rookie at this. Does being a martyr suit me? Oh god, is that what I'm struggling to let go of?

The Farming 'dream' is obviously not over for us yet. We can't afford to leave even if we wanted to. But big changes are afoot, some of which I can't talk about yet. I am excited about 2016 as much as I am resentful of the work that goes with this crazy life. I still have this niggling feeling that there is a remote homestead somewhere for me and Ian and the girls that offers peace and calm. Luckily, I am not being asked to make that decision today. The only thing I have to achieve today is pulling myself together.

Laurica Farm, winner of the Greater Langley Chamber of Commerce Business Award 2015 for Environmental Leadership

It never rains but it pours

The title of this post has both literal and metaphoric purpose.  As I sit at my kitchen table typing this blog, it is literally pouring down with rain (hence I'm blogging instead of completing the outdoor tasks Ian asked me to do today).  But it is also a reflection of life on the farm at the moment; once something goes wrong, everything seems to tumble down around you.

Regular readers of this blog will know that we've had quite a good transition to homesteading life.  We have worked hard, made sacrifices but achieved a lot.  That changed recently.  The major story is the fruit cage falling down under the weight of the snow.  This collapse triggered a lot of other things that have thrown us off track.  Firstly, the work that has gone back into rebuilding it.  The biggest thing to overcome was an attitudinal barrier for me.  The first day after it collapsed, I went around undoing all the cables that are for training the fruit trees and bushes along.  I'd only finished installing these 3 weeks earlier.  My arms ached tightening them all up and now they were aching again undoing them.  It was really hard to overcome the mental challenge of doing it all again!  Thankfully, Ian and I work well under pressure and have banded together, erected flood lights and laboured through the dark, snow and rain to rebuild the frame.  One week after the collapse, the entire 20,000 sq. ft. frame is back up.  We still have to replace the netting but it's a little less soul destroying seeing the fruit cage now.

The time wasn't the only cost of this rebuild.  We had to replace some of the timbers too.  Unbeknownst to me, the price of wood fluctuates depending on the US construction market.  Of course, timber is way more expensive now than when we purchased it the first time.  We still need to buy more concrete and other materials, I think the remedial work will cost us around $1500, which we can ill afford.  We are also really behind our schedule, we should have moved in animals and begun planting this week but everything has been put on hold.

I also have to acknowledge the friends that rallied around to help us, especially Kyle and Shenade Ingram.  Kyle came and volunteered his time to help demolish, paint and rebuild for four days.  Shenade collected Jess from school and cleaned my house.  Thank you Ingrams!

The dishwasher died about a month ago.  Followed by the tumble dryer.  Followed by numerous other seemingly little things that all add up to one big headache.  I've spent this week trying to focus on the silver lining.

Fruitcagegate: Although devastating at the time, thankfully it was empty (apart from the chickens who miraculously escaped death by crushing).  If this happened in five years time, it would have destroyed $1000's of dollars worth of fruit trees and bushes.  We are now able to make a more accurate risk assessment for the rebuild and take steps to ensure we are never in this position again.

The dishwasher is turning out to be a blessing in disguise.  I quite like washing up.  I stand at the sink looking out of the window planning and musing about farm issues.  Two deer wondered passed the window today which was just beautiful to observe and was a reminder as to why we chose rural life - far nicer to look at marauding wildlife than gangs of marauding youth!

The other upside is the closeness it evokes within the family.  With one of us washing and another drying, we are literally close in the teeny weeny kitchen space but also we talk.  Lauren and I have been chit chatting about friends, school, the farm and even politics.  I think we'd forgotten to do a lot of talking as she turned an Internet obsessed teenage and I became busier.  But now we find ourselves in a small space discovering pleasures in each others company again.  I now relish this time without distraction.  Even Jessica is learning the value of helping with chores and asks to help dry the dishes after breakfast.  It's heartwarming to see the girls take responsibility for helping.  We're not going to replace the dishwasher and might use the space for an extra cupboard or even try and remodel the existing kitchen a bit.

The tumble dryer is another story.  I've been trying not to use it for a while now and dry the clothes on the line whenever possible.  And that's the thing. 'Whenever possible' turns into when it's raining, when I'm short of time, and a plethora of other excuses.  I'm learning that as long as I'm organized, I can dry clothes indoors when the weather is bad.  A clotheshorse in front of the wood burning stove is amazingly effective.  Tumble dryers are expensive to run so we're saving a fortune.  We've decided not to replace the tumble dryer either.

The offset of all this is my time.  I've talked about this before I think but my previous reliance on modern luxuries like dishwashers & tumble dryers was driven by convenience.  It's hard to manage a frugal lifestyle and a full time job!  But now this is my job.  When you consider the cost of going to a job (fuel, childcare, convenience items and easy food), I believe I'm saving us more than I could earn.  And that monetary value will increase as my homesteading role extends to growing and produce.  Somebody said I was a housewife which a disdainful and patronising tone last week, which made me laugh.  Well I'm not sure there are many housewives that can operate the kind of power tools I can or have the carpentry skills I'm acquiring, but whatever.  I know the value of my time here on the homestead may not yet be making us financially better off but all our lives are richer.

Housewife, eh?

As for the other things that have failed, broken, given up, well it's nothing we can't manage really.  It's amazing how creative you become when you walk away from a throw away society and mind set.  And so it's time.  This is it.  The point in my transition that I have truly become a homesteading hippy. :-)

Cathy and Ian, circa 2064, probably. :-)

Dollars and Sense

Silly, silly me.  How did we ever believe we could budget for the unknown?  You've heard me say before that we budgeted and allocated every available dollar and cent to make this house purchase possible, but this is not your average house move.  We've never set up a homestead before and so there have been costs for things that never even crossed our minds.  I’ll give you an example.  Paint.  Not just any paint, Ian believes in paying for the best quality to get the best value and longevity from any purchase.  This belief resulted in the purchase of ‘Shark skin’ instead of just any ‘run on the mill’ exterior paint.  As the painter, I can say that this is a great product BUT at over $200 for 5 gallons, it’s not cheap.  We’re currently on our third 5 gallon bucket.  Then you add painting supplies, etc. and the cost spirals.  Anyway, it’s all good and I’m pleased with what we've achieved but it has made me question whether we've really fully committed to our ‘make-do’ lifestyle.

To be honest with you, it hasn't really been my focus.  We've been so entrenched in the work that we haven’t really considered the cost-cutting part of this transition.  We've still been going out for dinner and I treated myself to a new pair of Hunter boots off eBay and yes, there are indulgences that we could have done without.  The consequence of this carelessness is that our hand has been forced.  Now that the weather is changing, we’re limited on what we can do outside and so comes the time to focus on finance.  Except now we have no choice but to make cuts.  Between now and December when Ian’s company pays shares and bonuses, the belt will be tightened so much we might be blue in the face.  You won’t be seeing us eating out at Milestones or shopping for fancy farm foot ware anytime soon.  So it really begins here, the life and sacrifices of a homesteader.  We knew this would be the pay-off for the lifestyle we've chosen but let see how the theory translates into practice.

That was the blog post I had drafted on Wednesday.  But then something happened.  I met a lady who unknowingly impacted on me with such force; it made me collide with a critical analysis of myself.  I haven’t sought this woman’s permission to disclose her information so for the sake of this post, we’ll call her Kate.

Kate and I met by chance and she came to the farm.  During the course of our meeting, she told me her story.  Up until a few years ago, Kate’s family were average hardworking people.  Kate had worked all her life to give the best to her own three children and two boys that she fostered.  Her story was much like any other until their life was touched by an event of immeasurable cruelty.  Kate projects resilience and strength, but her eyes tell a story of trauma.  Kate has made sacrifices to try and regain some stability for her family.  These are not the kind of sacrifices I am making.  My whining makes me ashamed in the presence of people like Kate “oh poor me, I can’t go out for dinner”, “eeewww, a snake slithered over my foot”, “I’m working so hard, my muscles ache”.  I think that’s what you call ‘a real first-world problem’; these are challenges, not sacrifices.

Kate walked around Laurica Farm in awe.  She talked about her love for the outdoors and the beauty of the farm.  She listened intently to our plans and asked questions.  Kate gave me perspective.  I will not talk about sacrifices again.  Being here is not a sacrifice, being here is a privilege.  We have to work hard, but who doesn't.  At least this is our choice.  Kate’s circumstances are out of her control. 

And so, thanks to Kate, as summer ends and fall takes hold, I am filled with a new determination.  I am determined not to be complacent, to keep perspective on the work and demands and, most importantly, to keep enjoying this challenge.