We Bought a Farm: My New Life Was Marking Me

 

 

I would never put any book up there with the Bible. It's in a league of its own. But after the Bible, The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball is truly the book that I would say has most affected me as a reader. And even moreso, as a farmer. A farmher. 

I have written about this book previously on my Blog. I feel that Ms. Kimball wrote the book that I always wanted to write so what is the point in me writing that same book? 

Seriously. 

Okay, so the key players would be different. And she came from New York City and I came from Fort Lauderdale. She married a farmer, and I married a guy who just dreamed of farming. But still ... her words, nearly all of them, could have been my own. 

So because she's already said the things I wanted to say but said them better than I ever could, I've decided to instead start writing about her best quotes on my Blog. I'm gonna break the quote down and share why it just "gives me all the feels."

My new life was marking me.

It happened without me even realizing it. Gradually. One day I had never touched a chicken. Then I was forced to pick one up. Cut off one's head. Save its life. Boil its feet. End its life. Eat it's life. Make sure none of its life was wasted. 

At first I would tell people that I lived on a farm. That I was married to a guy who liked to farm. But suddenly, I realized, that it was my life too. And I wanted the identity of it being my life. 

It wasn't just about the husband. It was about me. And the children that were both of us.

There was this one time that we had to put some pigs down. It was an awful story and we felt terrible that it had come to this. And I didn't want to participate whatsoever, and I told my husband as much. "I'm out. You kill the pigs." 

But then he came in the house and took off his hat and said: "I need you. I need another person to help me. I can't do it without you. If you are going to raise animals, you have to be able to kill animals." 

I may have said something back like: "I didn't want to raise these animals. You did." 

But it was truth. What he said was truth. We had done this together. And we'd have to end it together.

So I stood in the pig paddock with my hands over my ears and my eyes squinted shut tight, tears running down my cheeks, thanking these pigs for their lives and apologizing that we hadn't managed them as well as we should have, and helping my husband drag them to the four-wheeler and into the woods where some other animal could feast off their death because they were too small for us to process and eat them ourselves. 

I was affected. I wanted to feel this. And so I did. 

And more than even feeling it, I now knew where food came from. And I was changed by it. I could never go back to the "not knowing." I had seen how much work it was to raise animals correctly. How quickly it could get away from you. And I wanted to make sure to always do it right.

"Maybe most important, farm food itself is totally different from what most people now think of as food: none of those colorful boxed and bagged products, precut, parboiled, ready to eat, and engineered to appear to our basest desires. We were selling the opposite: naked, unprocessed food, two steps from the dirt."

It was happening so quickly.

I remember the first time I realized I was not the same girl I had been. We had friends in town. Friends from my "former life" and one of them remarked: "Wendi. Is this really you? I mean you are checking on this laboring pig and not afraid to just climb in there and get dirty and, this just doesn't seem like the Wendi we know."

And I realized it wasn't me. I mean it was me but a totally changed version of my former self who worked for a cardiovascular researcher and wore dressy clothes and ate downtown. And while I missed my old self, I suddenly realized, I could never bring her back again. Because to do so would mean losing the amazing person this farm had helped me become.

There were intermittent spells of resistance, during which I'd pluck and moisturize and exfoliate, 

I would take a break and go to a hotel or have a spa day. I would want to go out for dinner and get dressed up and pretend that I never got dirty. And while I still like those spa days, and I was never really a "girly girl" in the first place, those days really are behind me. I don't desire the fancy stuff. I like my farm. I like eating our food. I can try to pretend that my farm life doesn't exist, but even if it didn't, difficulties don't cease to exist.

"There is no such thing as escape after all, only an exchange of one set of difficulties for another ... It wasn't Mark or the farm or marriage I was trying to shake loose from but my own imperfect self, and even if I kept moving, she would dog me all the way around the world, forever."

and then there was a period of grieving for my old self, 

I'd feel sad about that a bit. I'd think: "I'm never going to live in a neighborhood. I'm never going to be able to just run down the street to go to the grocery store. I'm always going to have to get up in the morning and tend to something, and I was a bit sad about that. Sad for the life I thought I would always be living. Teaching. Coaching. Living "in town." Shopping at Target. Eating out. The farm would never give me a break. It would always be there. And was that okay with me? 

"A farm is a manipulative creative. There is no such thing as finished. Work comes in a stream and has no end. There are only the things that must be done now and things that can be done later."

who seemed to be disappearing toward the horizon, 

But interspersed with that grief of what I never would be was the knowledge that this life was what I wanted to live. Someone asked me once: "Is this hard?" 

Terribly. 

"Would you change back to who you were before if you could?" 

No. 

Absolutely not.

Never. 

It's not possible.

In fact, in the beginning I always thought: "If something happened to JB, I'd move into town and start over there." Now I can only think: "If something happens to JB, I have to do everything in my power to make sure I can keep me and my kids here. On the farm. Where we belong. Forever."

"Cook things, eat them with other people. If you can tire your own bones while growing the beans, so much the better for you."  

and then I relaxed into it. 

And I've accepted it. This is me now. I don't want to be anything but this. I'm often dirty and sweaty and wearing clothes that would embarrass my teenager if they weren't a farmer too who has been taught that you've just go to be comfortable and practical when you are farming. 

I listen to country songs about small towns and the slow life, and I ... relate. I'm happy being a person who can relate. 

And I don't want it to change. 

Ever. 

"...farming takes root in you and crowds out other endeavors, makes them seem paltry. Your acres become a world. And maybe you realize that it is beyond those acres or in your distant past, back in the realm of TiVo and cubicles, of take-out food and central heat and air, in that country where discomfort has nearly disappeared, that you were deprived. Deprived of the pleasure of desire, of effort and difficulty and meaningful accomplishment."