6 months in

 We were sitting yesterday afternoon, heat-exhausted and tired from a few hours work on the farm, talking about just how much longer we can do this.

Not that we did that much - she mowed the plot perimeter and trimmed the edges of our main 1000 square foot plot. I watered the beds and dropped some clover seed and some straw on a small part of the newly cleared field. We had a pop-up tent and plenty of cold water, took plenty of breaks.  We managed to get out by 3, the hottest part of the day. It was still too much. The high was 92 yesterday. 

 It feels sometimes that it might kill us, with the extreme heat and our vulnerabilities. We need to be morning people. We need a helper. We need storage so we don’t have to haul equipment. We need to get that rain shed up and working. We need it to start raining, actually.  Lots of needs. Not enough energy.

So while we were talking in our exhausted states, I talked about my 3 year plan. I had thought it could be done in 3 years, have most of the infrastructure in and a small but viable business in willow. Maybe even the utilities that would allow us to stay there during harvest and planting seasons, so much more efficient. 

And, as I posted previously, it has been a year since I made an offer on the property. But, I remembered, it has only been 6 months since we’ve had access to the land. Only 6 months. The driveway was finished in mid January of this year. It feels pretty remarkable, given the time and the obstacle of weird weather, that we’ve got some pretty healthy willow growing and are still, so far, wanting to plant more. 

We have busted our old lady asses to get here. Still standing though. C’mon, 2 1/2 years.