Walking Away - or Rather Rolling Away

2021 11 13

A lot can happen in 10 years, and it has.  I've raised sheep and goats, sold said sheep and goats, got laid off from my lucrative job, got my real estate licence, bought a stained glass store, quit real estate cause THAT sucked, grew the stained glass business, then scraped by during a global pandemic, and recently rejoined the workforce as a remote employee.  

During this time I've watched the two human beings I gave birth to survive the horrors of high school and grow into the beautiful and joy filled creatures I had hoped they would become.  Their father took his own life earlier this year, a tragic ending to a complicated story. The kids are handling it better than I did, but I'm better now.  Thing 1 came out as trans a few years ago, which has been an interesting journey in and of itself, and Thing 2 recently began driving, which has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for all of us. 

My dad died in 2014, my mom is in a semi-assisted living facility, my brother has found religion which has caused me and my kids to distance from them a bit, and he started his own machining business which is thriving. 

So, that's the last decade in a nutshell.  And here's  the newest adventure:

Yep, I done taken complete leave of my senses and am taking the show on the road.  HasliVal will remain home base, but I am upping my road tripping game.  

Walking it back, or maybe a do-si-do.

2019 01 01

Real estate has not brought me the joy I had hoped it would.  The business is sketchy and saturated with people I don't care to emulate.  I will keep my license active for now, I think.  I've thought of chucking it all, but I think there's still some role for me to play there, so I'll let it ride for now. 

I sold most of the sheep.  I'm keeping the 2 old ewes and a young wether to keep them company.   I sold the one nice young Nubian doe I had, and will probably keep most of the rest of the goats, but the herd is definitely smaller and I am ok with that.  I have had a lot of success as a farmer, and learned a tremendous amount.  But it's time to do something different, and this opportunity just fell in my lap. 

There's a line in a book I enjoy by Jen Sincero where she basically asks the reader to find that thing that lights you up.  That thing where you find yourself so engrossed that you say, "My foot!  I can't feel my foot!" because you have become so engrossed in what you are doing that you lose track of time and forget to eat.  Making stained glass does that for me.  It always has, but I never thought it could earn me a living. 

I really think the last 3 years have been preparing me for this adventure.  I have learned a shit ton about marketing and sales.  Even though I have not been wildly successful in selling Real Estate, I have sold a lot, and have been exposed to amazing entrepreneurs along the way.   Now that I am selling something that I love, I think the sky is the limit! 

Step 2: Walking away from corporate America

Well, it finally happened.  I got laid off.  There's a lot that has happened since my last post, but in short, our division got sold, and the company that bought us already had a staff of F&A weenies, so the overlords have been laying us off in dribs and drabs, and they finally got around to my position on April 1st.  Yep, it's true, on April Fools Day I got pulled in to the bossman's office and was told that they 'regretted to inform....' blah blah blah. 

It was not unexpected, nor in any way, shape, or form, sad.  Well, it was sad for my remaining co-workers who were left behind to try to keep things flowing smoothly with fewer and fewer people.  But truthfully it was only my affection for those same people that kept me driving in to work each morning in the first place.  The job itself was hollow and dream-sucking by then. 

I had been with the company for 16 years, so I got a nice severance and there will be unemployment benefits while I look for other work or make this HasliVal Farm thing work.  We're going to be OK.  Better than OK, I can feel it!

And the farm thrives.  The chickens lay eggs, the pigs got fat, and there is still some beef in the freezer from the failed dairy cow experiment.  Last year the peach tree gave a bumper crop of its life altering peaches, and there are folks signing up for the waiting list this year already.  :-)  The local farmer's market is plugging along, and there's always room for one more farmer. 

On a sad note, though, a little over a year ago I lost my father to cancer.  He was one of the few people who encouraged me in this farm endeavor, and I am sorry that he will not be around to see where it goes.  His stories of summers on his Uncle Joe's Farm were inspirational to me, things like how chickens provided pest control as well as eggs, and that pigs could be raised cheaply on kitchen leftovers, shaped my resolve to NOT do things the modern conventional way.  Especially when kids are getting sicker and sicker from pesticides, and a bag of hog feed is $20!

So, full steam ahead. 

An open letter to young farmers, from a middle aged new farmer.

Dear young people, young farmers in particular,  

 

I recently heard that young Jenna, of Cold Antler Farm, is holding her second (or maybe it's the third) "AntlerStock" which is a festival of sorts, like the one held in PA by Mother Earth News.  It will be held on her farm in upstate NY, and feature experienced homesteaders giving clinics on everything from gardening to heating with wood to raising chickens to making soap to tending sheep to spinning yarn.  Readers of her blog are planning to hike in from all corners of the country to attend, an impressive accomplishment for one so new to farming.

Sadly, while her farm produces plenty of eggs and garden veggies to make omelets, and she has several humanely raised and processed chickens in her freezer to grill for dinner, she can't offer any food to the attendees, because the USDA is cracking down on the farm-to-table movement. 

To feed her own food to guests, the food she personally eats every day and feeds to her friends and family, she would have to construct a full USDA inspected and approved commercial kitchen. 

People, she's at the point in her career where she needs a cord of wood and a stack of barn building lumber simply to exist for the next several months.  To say that this is a horrifying situation is a monumental understatement. 

Jenna, I apologize for those USDA regulations.  You didn't vote for the yuckapucks that made those laws, my generation and the one before me did.  I apologize to you, and everyone like you who is struggling to start a business in this over regulated country, my generation was asleep at the wheel. 

Happily, some of us have opened our eyes and are fighting back. I just hope it's not a case of too few arriving too late.

You wonder why this is happening.  I think it's easily explainable.  The corporations are afraid of losing their power, their profits and their market-share.  And the legislators that those billionaires prop up in Congress would go down, too, so they are acting out of their own fears by passing bad laws protecting corporations and not people.  The kids of my generation grew up hearing "Money is power." and "Go big or go home." The measure of our success in our elders' eyes was simply what college did we graduate from, what title did we hold at which mega corporation, and how much money were we making.

In retrospect, it's pathetic, and I am sorry we have left you a more difficult world to live in.  For my part I will fight to fix what I can.

Humbly,
Stephanie J.
HasliVal Farm

Status check a-la-Jenna

Hi, I am Stephanie and I suffered all my life from what I now know, thanks to Jenna, was a bad case of Barnheart. It was a long and winding road that got me here, mostly filled with half hearted attempts at 'normalcy'.  College - marriage - kids - houses in the burbs...  But I was always happiest at the barn with my horse, and trotting down a wooded trail with the sunlight sparkling through the trees was heaven on earth.  The universe kept sending me people along the way that were making me go, "Hummmmm?"  I remember the first time I stayed in a home that was heated with a woodstove.  It was in Galway NY and it was BUTTA$$ cold and that 250 year old house felt SO good.  These folks were lovely upper middle class people with real jobs and yet they chose to heat with wood.  HMMMMM?  And the people up the road at the Waterwheel shop made their own cheese.  It was so good!  I did not know people could make their own cheese.  HMMMMM  Then I went to PA and had the opportunity to see the Amish and meet raw milk farmers and pick blackberries right off a bush that you could actually eat and not get sick. (I grew up in TX, not everything that looks like a berry here should be eaten!)  The milk straight from the cow was an experience I will never forget, kindof like my first kiss. 
Eventually I worked my way back to TX and landed in a nice suburban house less than a mile from my parents, which made them very happy. My neighbor was a veggie gardener, and I just wanted to grow a little garden of my own and have a couple of chickens so I could get a tab self-reliant.  (The socialist republic of Benbrook had other ideas, btw.)  That was it.  I had no idea where to start, so I went to Half Price books and picked up a couple of books to help me learn backyard sustainability, and one was called "Made From Scratch".  This was after I had killed off an entire batch of illegally kept "Rainbow Layers" and when I read that your dogs had eaten your chicks, too, I no longer felt alone. And you kept saying you were GOING to have a farm and you were GOING to be a shepherd and there was a reference to your blog.  I looked it up and you were there, still going on and on about becoming a farmer, then within a couple of years DANGED if you hadn't gone and done it.  I followed your blog through 2009 and 2010 and was working through my own fears right along with you.  I wanted to live on a farm, but everyone I knew thought I should live in the suburbs, but the animal control nazis were banging on my door, and everyone seemed to ba against me, except for your blog which kept telling me it COULD be done, and one dear friend who lived on 3 acres just outside town.  She also happens to be a real estate agent.  You see where this is heading.  By March 2011 I finally thought, "If a 20-something can up and do that, so can I, and I better do it now before I get too old to set the place up." (I am 47.) The For Sale sign went in the yard and Debbie and I started looking at farms.  There were family hysterics and funding gyrations that I won't go into, but then one day my mom looked at me with this weird look on her face and said, "You're really serious about this farm thing, aren't you?"  I just shrugged because I didn't want to fight. She floored me by saying "What can your Dad and I do to help?"  60 days later I closed on a 3/2/2 home with a makeshift barn on 5 unrestricted acres in a nearby town, one with a great school system for my kids and close enough to civilization that my parents are not afraid I would die before the paramedics can get to me.  :-)  That was a little over a year ago.  I have since witnessed my first goat kiddings, sheeps lambing, raised 3 batches of broilers, and installed a 30x60 garden that is a learning place in progress.  The peach tree bloomed and fruited in spite of the drought, and I have plans to expand the 'orchard'.  Parker County Peaches are life altering, but that's another post entirely.  So this is long, and meandering, but you asked.  Thank you for all you do, and I planted the seeds from Annie's last week, so thank you again for helping make that happen.  You're a real inspiration and I look forward to many more years of Barnheart treatments. 

It's dinnertime:

30 Broiler chicks from Ag Extention agent = $45.00
9 bags of non medicated grower feed @ $15 ea = $135.00
7 bags of shavings for bedding @ $6.00 ea = $42.00
1 day processing equipment rental = $60.00
8-ball zucchinni locally grown = bartered for one of my life altering Parker County peaches (don't scoff till you've tried one)
onion from the garden = $0.05

The knowledge that everything I had for dinner was locally, sustainably and humanely grown = PRICELESS!

Making arrangements to barter some of the the meat for firewood = BONUS!

Jenna asked what our dreams are.

Jenna - You are so sweet to ask.  I do enjoy reading your blogs and books, they keep me going when my boots spring a leak.  I am also glad others are blogging on their travails, many of them/us inspired by your courageous plow-ahead git-er-dun even if it ain't purty, attitude. 

Like you, I am a bit of a plugger.  Nothing fancy, just quietly freaking my middle class suburban family out by chucking the HOA lifestyle to live in the country on 5 acres that are unrestricted. (Like your 'right to farm' areas.)  I am trying a little of this and a little of that seeing what works and what was only a good idea on paper.

Dollar, our horse, is a retired racehorse that I can ride, but isn't so good with kids.  I don't really have the acreage to have more horses, and the kids have not expressed 'horsey' tendancies so the horse is simply decorative for now.  He has a good attitude so I feel confident I could teach him to drive should the need arise and he be required to "pull his weight."

I have goats and sheep, may stick with both, may not.  With goats, I am not sure the milk is worth the destruction they leave in their wake, though they are good learning animals for the kids to start milking and showing.  Goats are sturdy and quite interactive, but won't break your leg if they kick you.
 
Sheep I enjoy, but they are not as interactive as the goats, and I am not a spinner (yet).  I sheared part of my first sheep and may rethink THAT little idea.  I only managed to get half her back done, and she was nicked all over like a 12 year old who borrowed Dad's razor to shave her legs without telling Mom.  We got in a tussle and she hiked herself up and sent the clippers flying, breaking the teeth.  The guys at the Blade Repair place just looked at me with sad faces.

We have a cow.  A Jersey named Daisy.  She is supposed to calve this Summer and the plan is to let her raise 2-3 dairy calves and only have to milk once a day.  I'll let you know how that works out for us.  :-)

However, chickens are a go! I have processed 2 batches of meaties and while I loathe their smell, the carcass is TOTALLY worth their freakishness in life. We have laying hens, too and happily I have several 'customers' that I keep out of the grocery store egg aisle.  Chickens are easy to raise and smart enough to sleep inside the barn.  Turkeys, not so much, the coyotes can have 'em.  Ducks have been prolific, and are a riot to watch waddle about, but I have not actually cooked one yet but my son likes them so they will stay for the entertainment value if nothing else.

The garden is plowed up and some seeds and plants have been planted.  Again, a little of this and a little of that, to see what works and what doesn't.  My daughter planted corn, my son planted 'salsa'.  I planted asparagus.  Please oh please let my off-grid future be FULL of asparagus!

Woodstove is installed, so we are bound to have mild winters from here forward.  :-) The spot on the horizon is definitely OFF grid, solar and wind powered, bartering raw milk which I can produce on my flat, windy 5 acres for firewood that I can not.

And someday, waking up and not packing up for the office, knowing I will spend the day tending the creatures and gardens, but not throwing up because there's a bill I can't pay, looks pretty good to me.