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.