“Same old dishes…”

I found this meme on twitter and thought, “Wow, so me right now,” and posted it to my Instagram stories.

It’s really been the vibe this last week or so. It seems like I find myself saying “My life is perfect and I’m loving every second, what is farmer burnout?” Then immediately start feeling the burn out.

Yesterday it was raining all morning. I’d done the market the day before and took the opportunity to lavishly lay in bed. Even Rey, usually intent on getting into the garden, was deterred by the rain, and we both sat in the messy bus and played our video games. I took a short nap.

At 4:00 we roused ourselves. I hoped Rey would get water from the neighbor’s and maybe water the hoophouse for me, and I could focus on cleaning the bus, but he wanted to get in the garden and pick caterpillars off the brassicas before they become twigs.

I went for water, came back, and cleaned. Same old dishes, same old dust. I could feel my mind clearing as I cleaned though. I went so far as to change the bedding back to the winter comforter, and cleaned the mess on the bus driver seat and reorganized it to house the petfood. I was working until sundown. At about 8:30 I finished, just as Rey was finishing his bug picking. He came and showed me a bucket with hundreds of worms. Even he is starting to feel like his efforts are futile, we’ll have to find a better solution for the worms next season.

I went out and watered the hoophouse, holding a flashlight in my mouth like a gag. It’s been a consistent 10 buckets almost every day, establishing the winter plants in the hoophouse, but even once they come up, I’ll have to keep on with the water or they’ll stop growing.

We’re feeling over it. We’ve been glamping like this for 2 years now. We’ve gotten necessary breaks, but currently have no house sitting opportunities or the funds available to visit nearby friends. I’m longing to walk across carpet to a bathroom in the middle of the night.

I’ve been focused on this final push for the garden the past few weeks, but now I’m in a new crisis. We’ll keep on harvesting for as long as we can, but soon enough Old Man Winter will return (that son of a bitch), and the pittance we’re scraping by on now will dry up.

I’ve got my hands in numerous baskets at the moment. I’ll be starting a music school for the second time in my life this year. I’m partnering with some friends who have epic commercial real estate right by the stop light in Floyd. We’re making an amazing website, getting ads in local papers, flyering, canvassing to local schools and homeschool groups. It’s promising, but still in it’s gestation phase.

I’ve got my Jazz band. We’re a sextet and we sound amazing, but we’ve been gigging for free for nearly a year now, and are still playing for “exposure” (a loathesome word).

I’ve offered my services to the bakery that employed me since we first got to Floyd. I’m not a great fit for them though, we sell at the same market so i’m really only available for the few short winter months.

I’m considering finding remote work as well. I love to tap tap tap on my keyboard (obviously), I love a good spreadsheet, I’ve got a degree, surely there’s something there I could do. I looked into transcription work, but it seems like a scam. I’m not sure I have enough internet for such work anyway, one of the downsides of living in such a remote area.

The root of the issue is so complicated. Farming is a questionable occupation. Part of the name “Fool’s Hill Farm” is the foolish plight of trying to make it as a small farm, something that at times feels nearly impossible. We’re in a constant tug of war between inflated costs everywhere else, and our desire to provide food for people that’s affordable, not to mention the hungry ecosystem intent on helping us devour this produce before it even leaves the garden.

I’m not trying to whine or seek pity. I’ve put off sharing a lot of experiences this year because there have been plenty of times when it’s felt like too much. I prefer to sulk in private. It feels worthwhile to write about now though, because this is all part of the experience. I was fooled into thinking farming was going to be my way out of poverty, and I’ll be damned if I trick someone into thinking it’ll be so easy (screw you, JM Fortier).

I’m no stranger to the hustle, but I’m finding myself getting more bitter about it, and the cards stacked against us keep getting taller. Sometimes it feels like everything in this life is a giant scam. Farming at first felt like a way out, we could con the system by sustaining ourselves, (free food coming right up out of the ground!), but we’re not willing to sacrifice being normal people in our modern society. The more “normal” we seek to become, the more our cost of living rises, but we can’t yet stomach charging $4 for a bunch of kale.

And still the produce eventually rots. It’s worth so much at 9 am on Saturday, but so little by 1pm, and I give generously to the Angel Share on my way home so I don’t have to figure out what else to do with it. It’s so much work to figure out how to use produce sometimes, to have the time to cook is such a luxury. I respect our customers so much for seeing our vision and appreciating what we’re doing, and doing their own work in connecting with us, paying their hard earned money for our bug eaten, tiny bok choy.

But here I am at noon on a Monday, staring off into the back pastures behind the bus, trying to decide how to wrap up this little mopey blog post, as a cool, gentle breeze wafts by. Oh hello little hummingbird! What’s that you say? Money isn’t real? There’s sugar inside the catmint and anise hyssop, and all I need is a tiny beak in order to find it? Sounds delightful.