It takes a village
The farm crew on Alder Slope Road
9 months following our first blog post and the farm has found a home! One could say, we have birthed a farm. There is garlic in the ground, a new mule added to the team, and more plowed ground awaiting spring tending. We could not have made this happen by ourselves.
Rewind back to the March 1 post. A few weeks before that, we had signed a lease on some ground and were excitedly on our way out the door to purchase some draft power equipment we would need come springtime. Then we got the email. No more lease. No more farm? We had so many plans. We had spent all winter thinking, negotiating and working on this farm plan. We had already told our landlords that we were moving to our new farm ground and wouldn’t need to resign the lease on our home. Ouch.
Do we even go and buy this equipment that we need to farm garlic with mules? Is this even going to be a thing anymore??
We decided that the only thing that would cheer us up is to go hang out with some other draft power nerds and be around ponies. Adam is sure that Marvin is actually a wizard and uses his magic to fix up old farm equipment so that it runs like new. We journeyed to Halfway to see this Wizard, and we got to ooh and ahh at all of his projects, his #goals farm with all the usual suspects (goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, mules, horses, cows, dogs, cats, even an izuzu p’up!) and meet his super rad apprentices that are young folks just like us workin on a draft powered dream. So we bought our beautiful little disc, made some new friends and continued to believe in ourselves just a little bit.
Arriving in Halfway to an invitation onto the feed sleigh? YES!
A few months later, our friends at Hayshaker farm in Walla Walla were hosting a plowing bee and we got invited. Plowing bees are everything I love about farming: community driven, working together, efficiency, tangible, old mentoring new, putting your team to the test, practicing and honing a skill, GOOD FOOD. We brought our mules, and ended up taking home a new (old) plow! (wizardry).
Adam and Hallie plowing ground at Hayshaker Farm. Marvin and Amari (Hedgerose Farm) plowing in the background
Now, it was getting pretty late into Spring, and we were starting to doubt that we were going to pull off finding a home for our farm that season. We participated in a zoom meeting of Wallowa County folks that wanted to talk about local food accessibility and how we could begin to address this issue. The conversation was attended by 30+ people in the county that all wanted better access to fresh, local food. We got connected to our future landlords after that conversation, and invited to a meeting over at their place.
We met with them and a few other friends that had once had a farm vision for that same space. Everyone agreed that it would be a great idea for Adam and I to move forward with our farm there - and so it was! However, by that time in the season we still had to find a new place to live, move there, and start our summer jobs as packers for a local outfitter. It was a very daunting feeling, but we just allowed the current of fate to take us along to whatever happened next. We found a great little home in Enterprise, just a mile from the new farm ground. We got moved, we switched gears from farming to packing… and then back to farming again in late September/early October when we needed to buy garlic seed and get that shit planted so we could start our crop.
So much has happened in this nine month span, and there have been people supporting us in big ways and small every step of the way. From finding a new home to putting a clove of garlic in the ground… if you’re reading this - you have probably helped in some way or another for which we are so grateful. To invest in friendship, kinship, community, people you know and (generally) like being around... is so powerful. Thank you. Cheers to a new farm baby and to all the folks that are eager to see it grow and develop!
Plowing our own ground on Alder Slope Road
