Finally at the Farm!

 

I don't call it Yah-haven anymore, doesn't really roll off the tongue. It's Sabbathday Farm. It's not like there's a sign out front or anything. ;)

While 2020 was a terrible year for America, G-d be praised it is also the year that so many of my dreams came true. I am living at the farm full-time now (the house is a bit falling down but at least I'll have plenty to do.) The sale of the house in Dallas is set to close on the 16th, for a very nice sum. I have everything moved out that I needed to (praise G-d! All the moving trips were extremely rough on me, moving everything alone by myself.) And winter has come, which means I have time to deal with the constant onslaught of wasps and other insects that crawl in through the holes of this very porous house. I am both sealing up the holes in the house and also preparing to deal with the wasp problem proactively once the weather warms up. I know wasps are beneficial insects in the garden, but not in my house and not buzzing my front door. Seriously, in warm weather I was killing at least two wasps per day in the house, and I am not sure how they got in except there's an awful lot of holes in this house. There were literal clouds of wasps outside.

I also have a rat problem, but my cat Mango is on the job. Well, mostly.

And I have plots and plans for rat traps. Ultimately I am going to attack the problem at its source, which is that there are a ton of holes leading outside behind the cabinets in the kitchen and I am going to do a complete kitchen teardown and makeover. I need way more counter space, way more cabinets, way more shelves. This kitchen needs to be a well-oiled machine.

I feel very positive about getting this place ready to serve my needs. These are scary times, so many are losing their livelihoods. Originally part of the purpose of me getting a little farm was purely survival: I felt that bad times were inevitable, and I wanted my dwelling paid for and a bit of land and a means of feeding myself if the system failed in some way. I did not anticipate this particular problem, Coronavirus, but I anticipated something like it. And even if that didn't happen, well, I have lived through several economic meltdowns so far and I knew that depending on the human system for my survival is unwise.

However this land had a hitch hiding up its sleeve that I didn't know about, and that is it's soil. It's beautiful soil in one sense, thick and black. For digging though it's like digging military-grade glue. It sticks to everything, it's thick and dense, it is extremely hard to dig. So while I originally intended to do a double-dug garden bed, those plans have gone to hell. I am now going with basically some mongrelized version of a Ruth Stout - Back To Eden garden. First laying down thick paper or cardboard, to block weeds, then piling on a ton of organic matter, then mulching with wood chips. Then next year I pile on more organic matter and more wood chips, and so on. Basically building the soil upwards.

At every stage of this process, the difficulties seemed insurmountable. First, I thought I was NEVER going to get through the process of probating my mother's will, that took 2 years by itself. Then I thought I was NEVER going to find land that I could afford and which met my needs. Then I thought I was NEVER going to be finished with the moving.

And it's still that way now in a sense, I have so many things that need to be done it's crazy. The difference is that I am here now, I have laid hold on the dream. Now I have to make the dream work.