2021 hopes and dreams

When I imagined my life as a farmer, the visions in my head mostly involved planting seeds, harvesting vegetables, feeding animals, and delivering farm fresh food to customers. Generally getting my hands in the dirt and sharing the magical results with my community.

My fantasies weren’t all romantic agrarian visions. I imagined working in the rain and cleaning up animal poop too. I studied agriculture in college, so even imagined spreadsheets and formulas for feeding schedules, crop rotations, and soil amendments.

What I didn’t imagine was how much time I would spend in front of a computer or a book doing arithmetic, scheduling my time, and generally planning.

Besides the final December harvest and decorating for and celebrating Solstice, I have spent the better part of December and January so far with my hands not in dirt but on a keyboard and flipping through books.

Our hopes and dreams for 2021 are gaining their budgets and timelines. If things go as expected, we will have a busy year.

Along with all the seed sowing and animal poop scooping, here’s a few O/p Farm projects on the agenda for 2021:

• Adding September to our lineup of special occasion baskets (Labor Day cookout, anyone?!)

• Selling plant starts in the spring

• Offering eggs for spring dying, on top of tripling the number of Eggventure Baskets for sale

• Running electricity to the barn

• Installing a rainwater catchment system on the barn

• Hosting harvest work parties (small for social distancing)

• Fencing

• More fencing

• So much fencing

• Building season extension infrastructure, including a pair of hoop houses

• Raising a new kind of pig at Our perfect Farm - Gloucestershire Old Spots!

• And we’re even planning to try quail again

The planning part can sometimes feel more exhausting than a day in the field. But the inspiration that I’m left with after a rainy day spent in front of a laptop and stack of books is more than worth the time spent.

And the company ain’t so bad either.