Farming After Fifty

Farming After 50

A long, long time ago, when I was a dreamy kid living in a big city, I used to lay on my back in my yard and look up at the sky and imagine some kid in Kansas on a farm was looking at the same sky. And that made me feel connected. I did not quite understand or realize that those same New England clouds would not be visible in the midwest, but it didn’t matter. The thought always warmed me. Because I wanted to live on a farm. Desperately. I wanted horses to ride (never mind that I had NEVER ridden a horse), and cows to milk, chickens to tend and eggs to collect. It was my absolute DREAM! Eventually, I went on to work at a local farm and I loved every minute of it. But time passed. I grew older. The dream persisted. 

Reality Sets In

Yes, time passed. I was now in my 40’s, still single, and still working part time on a farm. And still loving every minute of it. My full time job was as a teaching assistant, and I was struggling to get by. Owning a farm appeared to be a goal far out of my reach. But I continued to love my weekend job and eventually I was even able to get a full time job at a school that provided animal assisted therapy. They had a farm! I was on a farm every single day now! And I was the teaching assistant in the schools garden program, helping to teach kids how to grow their own food from seeds! It may not have been MY farm, but it was close enough. The work, as always, was hard and dirty, but I LOVED every minute of it!

All Things Change With Time

Fast forward a few years and a blind date winds up turning into a marriage proposal in my late 40s to a man who shares some similar rural goals. He isn’t so much interested in have farm animals, but he DOES want to grow as much as his own food as possible. We begin to plan a wedding and look for a house with enough land to grow a BIG garden. Eventually, the wedding and the house materialized like a miracle. We moved into our new place in November. Come April we were breaking ground and putting in beds. Hard work in rocky New England soil. Those ancient glaciers from the ice age left their mark! That first spring, in the end, we wound up with 15 garden beds. And we began planting. Onion sets, potatoes, peas, beans, lettuce, squash…there was a lot to learn. I started EVERYTHING from seed. Strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb even….all from tiny seeds. Some things failed, some thrived that first year. This was a learning process for both my husband and I. 

New Challenges, New Skills

As the garden grew, and we were getting more produce, how to store and preserve it started to become a real issue! And so I took my weak and feeble canning skills, and started trying to expand. Some food was frozen, some things I hung to dry. And I did what I could with water bath canning, which was limited. Many foods are just not acidic enough to can that way. I had to learn new skills, clearly. But I was working and trying to maintain this big garden and time was limited. And by this time I had seen 50 years and beyond. I didn’t think I could keep up. AND I still longed for a farm. We talked about getting chickens, but there was just not enough time in the days.

And the Whole World Changes

Just as I was thinking that I would never have the time to get everything done or learned, a global pandemic hit. The world shut down. And suddenly all I had was time. We invested in a pressure canner and a food dehydrator. And my husband, I think in an attempt to keep my anxiety at bay, asked me if I wanted to get chickens. CHICKENS!!!! I was overjoyed!!!! We pre-ordered 8 chicks. And waited for the call that they were hatched and ready for pick-up. In the meantime, I learned how to pressure can! Low acidic foods and meats could now be safely processed in my kitchen. My dehydrator processed tomatoes and squash to be stored and sealed in jars for winter rehydration and use, as well as apple slices. I then added fermentation to my list of skills and began processing all those cucumbers into pickles to be stored in our cool basement for winter use. For the most part, I had no idea what I was doing. The internet was my friend. I joined canning and food preservation groups. I researched and researched some more. Some things failed and needed more practice, some things, like my pickles and hard cider, were wildly successful. We picked up our chicks and raised them in a back room…not something I would recommend or ever do again! Chickens are DUSTY! Our first eggs began showing up at the end of November – just in time for homemade eggnog. THE DREAM WAS BECOMMING A REALITY!!!!

The Homestead is Born

The pandemic has now pretty much ended, but I have never gone back to traditional work. What started out as a big garden is now 18 raised beds. The chickens are thriving. We turned the small back bedroom into a pantry to hold all of my jars of preserved foods and supplies. And we are hoping to get a larger property….and maybe some milk goats….and maybe some sheep, since I have learned to spin wool along the way. All this as I am staring down my soon to start 60^thyear. Can dreams from our childhoods still come true in our 50s? I am here to tell you that yes they can, as long as you are willing to do the work….and not lose that starry eyed child that lives, somewhere, deep inside us all.