i get this question with more frequency than i expected.
i've never thought my life exceptional or un-ordinary. and i don't pretend to coyly imply that it is here. but i do suppose it differs from the typical blogger's life. one doesn't often think of computers and farmers going together like salt and pepper. much less overall-wearing farmers and
The Internet. but i guess i'm a product of my iphone generation. and a result of having worked at facebook immediately before this. and so i blog. i facebook. i send pictures to the worldwideweb from my boyfriends iphone. i unabashedly love sharing information. and, it turns out, i am also an unabashed narcissist who enjoys sharing pictures and words about herself.
but some days i get tired of hearing my own writing voice. so here is a decidedly unembellished account of events post college :
-graduated school with a degree in post-colonial african history.
-moved to new york to follow a boy. boy ran away but i stayed long enough to find out i was not a good fit for the banking world.
-decided to throw myself 3000 miles in another direction. to san francisco. where i knew 1 girl.
-moved in with 7 boys in a converted warehouse in the mission.
-met nick (one of the 7).
-fell in love.
-got a job at facebook translating things from french to english and back again.
-went to spain for a family wedding and on the way nick visited his aunt in the alps of france. she suggested we housesit for that coming winter while she holiday-ed in india.
-nick laughed. i said yes.
-we scrimped and saved and lived with friends and stopped buying things. we had a big yard sale and got rid of an apartment's worth of Stuff.
-we quit our jobs. we flew to france. we spent three months doing the jobless-expats-in-the-mountains thing.
-we returned to the states. without healthcare. without jobs. without any money.
-we talked and talked and brainstormed. about What We Want To Do.
-we both kept coming back to farming.
-i emailed my cousin, a pig farmer in north carolina, and asked for a job.
-she wisely suggested we come down for a week and see if it was a good fit.
-we fell in love with the farm. and the farm with us.
-we signed up as interns for the summer.
-in july we both agreed we loved it too much to leave.
-and so we stayed.
-for another year.
-and then we realized. that farming was all consuming. and if we ever hoped to see our parents and brothers and sisters and friends again we would need to Return to new england.
-so this past august we did.
-we found an unsuspecting couple that opened their home, their paddocks, their barn, and their very big hearts to us and the 2 pigs, 1 cow, honeybees, 20 chickens, 1 duck, 1 cat, and 1 dog we dragged with us out of north carolina.
-we started living in a tent.
-in november we were hired to start a livestock program at a farm just 17 miles outside of boston.
-they only had veggies. now we've added 200 chickens to the mix.
-we find ourselves missing the countryside. and daydreaming about land-for-sale.
-the winter of 2012 was largely spent scheming on ways out of suburban-farming.
i've never thought my life exceptional or un-ordinary. and i don't pretend to coyly imply that it is here. but i do suppose it differs from the typical blogger's life. one doesn't often think of computers and farmers going together like salt and pepper. much less overall-wearing farmers and
The Internet. but i guess i'm a product of my iphone generation. and a result of having worked at facebook immediately before this. and so i blog. i facebook. i send pictures to the worldwideweb from my boyfriends iphone. i unabashedly love sharing information. and, it turns out, i am also an unabashed narcissist who enjoys sharing pictures and words about herself.
but some days i get tired of hearing my own writing voice. so here is a decidedly unembellished account of events post college :
-graduated school with a degree in post-colonial african history.
-moved to new york to follow a boy. boy ran away but i stayed long enough to find out i was not a good fit for the banking world.
-decided to throw myself 3000 miles in another direction. to san francisco. where i knew 1 girl.
-moved in with 7 boys in a converted warehouse in the mission.
-met nick (one of the 7).
-fell in love.
-got a job at facebook translating things from french to english and back again.
-went to spain for a family wedding and on the way nick visited his aunt in the alps of france. she suggested we housesit for that coming winter while she holiday-ed in india.
-nick laughed. i said yes.
-we scrimped and saved and lived with friends and stopped buying things. we had a big yard sale and got rid of an apartment's worth of Stuff.
-we quit our jobs. we flew to france. we spent three months doing the jobless-expats-in-the-mountains thing.
-we returned to the states. without healthcare. without jobs. without any money.
-we talked and talked and brainstormed. about What We Want To Do.
-we both kept coming back to farming.
-i emailed my cousin, a pig farmer in north carolina, and asked for a job.
-she wisely suggested we come down for a week and see if it was a good fit.
-we fell in love with the farm. and the farm with us.
-we signed up as interns for the summer.
-in july we both agreed we loved it too much to leave.
-and so we stayed.
-for another year.
-and then we realized. that farming was all consuming. and if we ever hoped to see our parents and brothers and sisters and friends again we would need to Return to new england.
-so this past august we did.
-we found an unsuspecting couple that opened their home, their paddocks, their barn, and their very big hearts to us and the 2 pigs, 1 cow, honeybees, 20 chickens, 1 duck, 1 cat, and 1 dog we dragged with us out of north carolina.
-we started living in a tent.
-in november we were hired to start a livestock program at a farm just 17 miles outside of boston.
-they only had veggies. now we've added 200 chickens to the mix.
-we find ourselves missing the countryside. and daydreaming about land-for-sale.
-the winter of 2012 was largely spent scheming on ways out of suburban-farming.
-in february what we were looking for found us....or perhaps it was the other way around. but either or. we found land for rent.
-at the end of march we will be moving up to vermont to rent a small barn apartment for us and a large dairy barn for the animals and the accompanying 250 acres of mountain-top sweetness.
-there we will begin to Farm on Our Own.
-and that is a terrifying prospect.
