For a decade, we promised each other, “next year.” It would just be another year or two, but that never came. We were unhappy with my job and kept looking for a way to make the jump that we had so desperately wanted to make in our first ten years of marriage. The lockdowns finally pushed us to finally do what I had promised her we would do so many years before: find a quiet, forested acreage where we could work the land and create our own dominion. Everybody thought we were crazy. With three children of 8 years, 5 years, and 18 months in tow, we set out and have not looked back. There were rough times early on, but every year gets easier and more rewarding. Our youngest is now 6 and has no recollection of a previous lifestyle. This is all he knows. It’s all he wants. They are all learning along side us, each with their niche business ideas and hobbies. It’s great to watch them learn to be human beings without the exterior influence of social pressures from their peers. They each have a love of learning that I didn’t have when I was their age… it was beaten out of me by the traditional, industrial school and university systems that promised so much, and yet gave so little. The five of us now learn what we want to learn, when we want to learn. Ask the kids about how excited dad gets when he starts talking about Andre Voisin, Jim Gerrish, or Alan Nation and grass farming. Watch them roll their eyes, or alternatively, light up because they have an embarrassing story about dad preaching about the grass blaze of growth, or the need for more deep bedding to improve our “aromatically and aesthetically romantic” acreage. If they only take away one thing from this whole life experience, I hope they hold onto the idea that dad still gets excited about learning new things, even if it is about root exudates. There is ever more learning to accomplish.
