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.

We didn't come this far just to come this far

The last year, life has thrown us in a lake and held our heads under water, letting us up occasionally for a quick gasp of air before shoving us down again. With the last breath we decided to metaphorically swim for another shore. It's time to set some goals and some boundaries. Enough with the ifs, buts, maybes, what ifs and most of all, the complaining.

With regard to last years fire, we are finally making in-roads. We fought tooth and nail almost daily to get our hempcrete house design approved and last week, we received our permits and broke ground. Not only is it exciting in itself to start building a house but we're amazed at the interest in the build and hempcrete as a material. Somehow we find people joining us and supporting us as we push forward with the house. However, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. We thought we had made some victories with our insurance company, but they are causing some issues again. There's a point where you have to throw caution to the wind and just start building. We have missed an entire farming season this year, we CANNOT afford to miss next year because we are still waiting to build. So it's on, we are starting a build that we now don't know will be fully covered by the insurance money. We're nothing if not dramatic! And it's just us. You know when you hear people say "oh, I'm building a house" when what they mean is "I'm sitting in my kitchen giving instructions to a contractor"? Yeah, well, that's not our reality. It's me and Ian sweating at the bottom of the foundations we dug in the blazing sun.  And of course, Ian's type-A syndrome has kicked in with him declaring that "there is not another person on the planet who is accurate enough to frame his house". Sweeping generalizations and insults to the global carpentry industry aside, with or without a decent insurance payout, there won't be enough money to pay other people to build it.

The farm without farming has been has been like a party without wine this summer! We've kept the animals going and another farmer has used our land for a few crops. But most of the growing soils that we worked so hard to build and nourish, lie empty or covered in weeds. We had a couple of events just to keep breathing life back into the place but Laurica Farm has been a quiet shell of it's former self. No crowds, no new growth and no farmer burn out, tantrums or break downs! It's almost become cliché to say it's been a time of reflection. Reflection suggests something quite and peaceful but we have a gun to our heads as we choose our pathway. And so it goes on...new plans, new relationships and renewed vigour. 2018 will be our 'do or die' year.

Next February will see us merge with our friends at True Grit Farm. Ashlee founded True Grit this year and mainly grows microgreens for restaurant supply as well as  CSA shares for the local community. Check out this story though, it's almost as daft as ours. Ashlee met Devin at the end of 2016. Devin has been so blown away by farming and inspired by the farming community that he is going to give up his well-paying job to become a farmer. Ha! Where have you heard that before?! Every time I look at him, it is with either pity or amusement, I can't quite figure out which emotion is stronger. But in all seriousness, you can teach anyone to farm, but you can't teach values. Devin is hard working and has innate farming values, he just doesn't know it yet.

So, Ian will be at the farm full-time for the first time since we moved here. He will farm mainly with Ashlee, who will teach us about microgreens and share her areas of expertize. Devin is chatty and confident so he will look after the customers. I will head up the events, which will see you strengthen an existing partnership with The Watershed Arts Café, and the rental of the tree house. And there it is! Not a complex master plan, but a plan nonetheless. A plan to keep going, a plan to address the burn out, a plan to pool our resources and aid the mutual growth of two awesome farms. A plan to make a living and reclaim a lifestyle during 2018 and if not, call it a day. It seems the last year has certainly made us fragile, but not fragile like a flower. Fragile like a bomb.

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.

Winter attacks!

It’s been a while since my last post and that’s a reflection on how busy life has been recently.  As you may remember, I took a seasonal job in Old Navy to keep me busy during the ‘quiet winter period’ on the farm. Pfft!  Winter has not brought rest.  Ian erected flood lights and we just carried on working in the dark, after the day jobs.  Old Navy has been good for me though.  I quite enjoy being around people who are constantly happy.  I’ve enjoyed making new friends that aren’t poultry and the light, fun atmosphere.  I’ve even enjoyed that madness that comes with sales and the quiet solitude of losing myself in sorting a heap of clothes balanced precariously on a table.  The whole work thing is proving a bit of a challenge for me personally though.  Trying to juggle a civilized work environment with rural farm life has presented both comic moments and feelings of failure.  For example, there was the time I was so rushed to get the school run done, buy chicken feed and get to work before 9am that I forgot to change out of my farm footwear!  I parked outside Old Navy only to be hit by the realization that I had boots on that were covered in paint and chicken poop.  Luckily for me, Old Navy is right by Walmart.  What I should have done is go and buy a cheap pair of shoes but my flustered brain did not choose that logic.  Instead I went and purchased some Brillo pads and cleaned my Hunter boots.  Also lucky for me, Hunter boots are quite fashionable at the moment and so when I strolled into Old Navy in my Hunters, a coworker said to me “I just love your style, the way you rock the country chic look is awesome”.  Well thank you naïve sole.  I love being an accidental style icon!

There has been quite a bit of progress on the farm as well as some harsh realities.  We have extended Chickingham Palace and there are additional occupants.  We now have 41 birds.  For those of you interested in chicken breeds, we have Caramel Queens (our only non-heritage breed), Coronation Sussex, Australoops, Amercaunas, (the blue egg layers) & Leghorns.  We also got 3 bantams (2 girls and a boy) for Jessica to tend to and enjoy.  We’re getting around 18 eggs a day now in a beautiful array of colours including white, hues of pink, brown and blue.  Despite plummeting temperatures and snow fall we have not lost any birds and although egg production slowed down during the cold spell, it didn’t stop.  I hate to gloat but this has made us feel good, especially as our experienced farming neighbours have significantly less eggs from the same amount of birds.  It’s really not about competition, but it certainly boosts our confidence that we are doing ok with the livestock.

The extension in progress

We built an asparagus bed in front of the barn extension as this is an area that gets a lot of sunlight.  I almost sustained serious injury (well, to my pride at least) during this endeavour.  I was filling the bed with compost (my home made compost!) when I went to push a lump of soil with a rake.  The lump was not moving and I had my legs against the wooden perimeter.  The result of me pushing unmoving soil and having no leverage resulted in me pushing myself backwards over the edge of the bed, much to Ian’s amusement.

Ian’s friend was looking for somewhere to park his excavator between jobs and so we struck a deal.  He could bring it here & we could use it.  And so we have started levelling out a plot for a hot house and excavating the site of the duck pond.  We’ve also started the pig and goat house in the front paddock.

Laurica Farm has had another opportunity to present itself as a master of social gatherings, this time in the form of Jessica’s 6^th birthday party.  On a beautiful sunny day at the end of November, 20 kids and their parents descended on us.  I had planned numerous party games to amuse the kids but they just turned into a wild, marauding bunch of squealing and laughing animals.  So we just left them to it.  We called them into the heated barn to feed them and sing happy birthday but then just left them to enjoy the fresh air.  There were a few tired kids by the end of it!  It’s a privilege to hear to sound of kids experiencing unconfined joy (right up until someone fell into a satellite dish of frozen water).  The other thing that brought me pleasure that day was to see the parents stay.  Some of these people we know well but some we have had limited contact with.  Everyone stayed at the party and had a glass of wine and some snacks by the fire pit.  That’s what this little piece of land excels at; making people relax.

There have also been some side projects here at the farm.  Ian built a custom stage for Jessica's school which look fabulous.  Also, we've been commissioned by our neighbours to build a cart for the farmers markets.  I hope that Ian takes this as a real compliment.  This piece of work was commissioned based on them seeing what he had created here on the farm.  I've also started working on blending some medicinal teas, to be marketed in the new year.  It's great to have these opportunities, but once again requires us to push ourselves to the limits.  

It was all going so well until the snow came this week.  Despite popular perception about snow in Canada, here on the West Coast around Vancouver, we really don’t experience much extreme weather.  In fact, the 6 inch fall that came this week is probably the most snow I’ve seen in this area since we moved to Canada.  However, it was enough to expose some weaknesses at the farm and keep us panic working until late on cold nights.  The 6 inches of snow sat on top of the fruit cage netting creating a white ceiling of snow pillows.  To be fair, the netting has held up fairly well but some of the weaker timbers that we didn’t finish bracing in the summer buckled.  Nothing broken but we do need to do some remedial work on the fruit cage.  We also lost the old lean-to roof at the back of the barn.  No harm done really and that can wait.

What this period has taught me is not to spread myself too thin.  By embracing Farmageddon, we’ve chosen a lifestyle.  It’s a lifestyle that has many rewards but demands everything.  We can flirt with other pursuits but we must stay committed to our little homestead.  We must ride the ups and downs of our relationship with farming and give ourselves completely to make it work.  Sorry Old Navy but you won’t be getting me back next Christmas.

Confessions of a Homesteader

This week has seen a real start of working the land and preparing for what is to come.  Grass has been cut, fences have been moved, things have been planted, trees have been felled, and I’ve been doing what every homesteader does this time of year…preserving food.  Obviously we haven’t had much of our own produce to preserve this year apart from an abundance of blackberries but I did strike deals with local farmers and received a mountain of green beans and mini cucumbers.  I jammed the blackberries, experimenting with Chia seeds as a gelling agent thus avoiding artificial things like pectin, and I’ve pickled the beans and cucumbers.  We have enough pickles for eternity!  I like the occasional pickled onion – my Mum always used to lament about the time I was trying to steal one off her Ploughman’s lunch when I was about 2 years old.  I was so persistent she let me take it in the end thinking I’d spit it straight out and leave her be, but instead all she heard was “nom nom nom” as I tucked into the onion.  Anyway, I’ve never really experimented with other pickled veg until recently.  Thankfully, I really quite like it and I’m looking forward to preserving the excess of our own harvest next summer.  I’ve also been reading about the health benefits of pickling.  I didn’t know until this week that pickling is extremely beneficial to your digestive health.

Along with our productive week, there have been a few ‘hiccups’, of course.  We decided to mow the front paddock with the tractor.  Ian started it and I took over after he’d done a few circuits.  He told me that he had seen voles scurrying around as he was mowing and joked about their funny long noses.  Off I went, looking out for these strange creatures but only saw a couple.  After I’d mowed half the field, Lauren came out to do the remainder.  I passed on the information about the resident voles and stepped back as she pulled away.  As she started the tractor, something wet hit my face.  You know that moment, when you just freeze, scared to find out what the offending material might be…yeah, you guessed it, some mangled body part of a small animal had gone through mower blades and had been ejected all over me.  I looked around to realize it was total vole and slug carnage in the paddock.  The corpses lay strewed around.  So there I was, in the midst of a Farmageddon genocide.

That wasn't the only unwanted animal encounter, this time we were the ones at risk.  We set ourselves up with a camp fire, marshmallows and sticks ready to watch the meteor shower.  All was going so well, we saw the international space center pass over and it was fantastic quality time with the family.  But before we saw a single meteor, we heard howling.  We assumed it was coyotes and didn’t panic but decided to take the dog and kids in as they were extremely close.  As I was walking towards the house with the last few items, Ian turned around and stared at something.  I didn’t need to turn around to know what he’d seen was close.  He just about had time to utter “I don’t think they’re coyotes, they’re wolves” before I started running for the safety of the house.  I know, I know, a bit of an overreaction perhaps, but still, nature can be scary sometimes.

So another roller coaster kinda week, from feeling like we were achieving a lot to feeling that we’d taken on too much, and as always, this evokes some reflection.  It wasn’t until today that I teased out the message from our recent experiences.  It was the Insurance lady who had come to finalize some details that made the metaphoric light bulb come on.  Once she had lifted her head from her clipboard and truly started to look around, she began to do what everyone does when they come here, she oooo’d and arrrr’d and wowed.  It made me think back to when I worked in Social Care.  I always believed that you could support someone in a bad situation to make positive changes as long as they had even a tiny spark of hope.  If their hope was gone, the battle was lost.  One of the things that chips away at a person’s hope is their environment.  Too often did we venture into grim, dark homes and find the person inhabiting the stale space had lost all motivation.  And it’s that belief which makes me confident that we will succeed here.  We are so lucky to have this amazing environment.  A wonderful open landscape with a natural serenity and beauty about it.  It’s the environment that makes people ooh and arrr when they come here.  It’s the environment that keeps us working late at night.  It’s the environment that makes me want to pickle and preserve its offerings.  It’s the environment that makes me want to stay home instead of going out, that makes me happy and content and makes me want to share it with my friends.  And I truly believe that, no matter how many mangled animals splat me, this environment will keep us plugging away to make it work. 

Here’s hoping I still find it inspiring in the middle of a wet, gray Vancouver winter!