Tag Archives: everything else

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I was really dreading our Shearing Day Celebration last weekend. I was sick with a nasty cold. I’d been out of town for the week leading up to it. I was expecting 11 house guests. There was nothing in the world I wanted to do less than have a hundred people over for lunch and shearing on Saturday.

And you know what? It was AMAZING! I had an incredible time. My guests had an incredible time. My staff had an incredible time. It was just a lovely and amazing event all-around.

Afterwards, I pretty much collapsed for three days. Fever, chills, brutal cough, runny nose, the works. (I’m only just back on my feet today.) But during those three days, I had a lot of time to think. Lots and lots of time to think. And I kept coming back to the same thing thing, over and over: My worst day running Juniper Moon Farm is better than my best day doing anything else.

I love this job I created for myself, this life I’ve built. I love everything about it. I love taking care of the animals. I love the community that has sprung up around the farm. I don’t necessarily love the shipping, or the money worries, or answering a million emails everyday, but those things are a very small price to pay for getting to live a life that is better than anything I could have dreamed up for myself.

Oh, there were hard times. Believe me- there were some very, very hard times! Sleepless nights. Fear. Lots of fear. But I amazed myself by refusing to give up. By getting back up every time I got knocked down. I wouldn’t trade those times for anything because I know what I am capable of now. I know how to make myself heard. I know that set backs are temporary.

The purpose of all this is not to be all braggy-braggy but to tell you something very important. Are you ready? There is nothing special about me. Nothing that makes me any more capable of following my dream and seeing it realized than you are. The only difference between me and you is that  I got a head start.

I don’t know what your dream is, but I know the only thing keeping you from realizing it, and that is YOU.

But that ends today! Today, I want you to take one tiny baby step towards your dream life. Just an itty-bitty baby step. Something that isn’t scary at all. Sign up for a class. Dedicate an hour a day to writing. Or painting. Or splitting atoms.

By breaking the process into tiny, manageable steps, you can stop dreaming and start doing. And you should never underestimate the power of doing, of creating momentum. Of showing yourself that you take this thing seriously.

So. Take a deep breath and tell me what your dream is. Then tell me what baby step you are going to take to get to it. Don’t worry! I’m going to be right here beside you while we get this done.

For at least ten years, I’ve saved all my fortune cookie fortunes in a jar on my desk. Today I pulled one out at random.

Sort of a D.I.Y. Magic 8 Ball.

All of a sudden I am up to by elbows in things that must be done. Our Shearing Celebration is coming up in on May 19th and there is lots to do to prepare, we’re trying to get the last of the Fall shares dyed and in the mail, I have about  thousand emails to return, and the magazine is starting to heat up. Unfortunately, I also have to go to Texas for 6 days to take care of some family business, starting tomorrow. I am a little bit stressed.

All the stuff that needs to be done is the work part of my job; i.e. not the shepherding part. Not the fun part. The part that feels like a job. It’s especially hard to get this stuff done when their are puppies in the barn and lambs springing all over the field, let me tell you!

The thing is, Juniper Moon Farm is kind of at a crossroads. We have so many new, exciting things we want to do, but we are all already maxed out in terms of work load. On of the things I’ve noticed as a small business owner is that you inevitably need a larger workforce before you are able to afford it. It’s hard, because more staff equals more opportunities for more products, and eventually more money coming in, but there is a lag time in between that makes everything stressful and terrifying.

There are a lot of things I need to look into- grant opportunities, maybe finding an angel investor or venture capital money- but all of them require a lot of time and that’s puts me back where I was. It’s a frustrating period, but we’ve been through them before and it always works out. I’m just stress and tired and cranky.

While I’m gone, Caroline and Zac will be updating you with daily puppy pics and news from the garden. I have to say, this year’s garden is EPIC. For example, last year we planted 6 tomato plant and we very nearly drowned in them. Remember this at the end of last season?

Well, this year we have 100 tomato plants. One. Hundred. All different varieties. And that’s just one vegetable- there are dozens and dozens!

Now I’m going to try to get as much as I can off my to do list before I leave tomorrow morning. More pics this afternoon.

We’re having a lunchtime meet-up at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival tomorrow at noon! Bring you’re lunch and look for the JMF sign in front of the Main Exhibit Hall at on Saturday. Can’t wait to see you!

I spent the weekend being spoiled to death by family and friends. Zac threw me a birthday party complete with four kinds of cake and two signature cocktails!

There is a old tradition of giving a piece of wedding cake to the honey bees. We decided that the bees would enjoy a piece of birthday cake just as well, and extended the gluttony to the chickens and geese. A good time was had by all.

It was all very low-key and lovely, and to tell you the truth, I’m not quiet ready to get back to work tonight. I’ll do a more thoughtful birthday post tomorrow but I did want to say thank you for all the lovely cards, emails and twitter shout-outs. You all made me feel like a million bucks today.

I spent the weekend being spoiled to death by family and friends. Zac threw me a birthday party complete with four kinds of cake and two signature cocktails! There is a old tradition of giving a piece of wedding cake to the honey bees. We decided that the bees would enjoy a piece of birthday cake just as well, and extended the gluttony to the chickens and geese. A good time was had by all.

It was all very low-key and lovely, and to tell you the truth, I’m not quiet ready to get back to work tonight. I’ll do a more thoughtful birthday post tomorrow but I did want to say thank you for all the lovely cards, emails and twitter shout-outs. You all made me feel like a million bucks today.

The other day, I received an email from a new blog reader- I’ll call her Ann-  asking a very big question. A very big question that I couldn’t  quiet find an answer for off the top of my head, one that I’ve spent hours thinking about for the last few day.

Her question was basically why? Why do we feel compelled to grow our own food? Why bother milking goats? Why all the sewing and knitting and baking from scratch when none of those things were necessary in our world. She understood the sheep, I think, because that was business, but she was having a hard time grasping the whole D.I.Y lifestyle that’s become recently so popular. Urban farming seems silly when there’s a market on every corner. Why sew clothes when there are clothes to be had for next to nothing? Just…why?

I want to say from the get-go that Ann’s email was completely respectful and deadly earnest. There wasn’t one iota of snark in her words. It was genuine curiosity that prompted her long and thoughtful email, which is probably why it completely flummoxed me. I started to dash off a top-of-my-head response full of wisdom, but then I realized I didn’t actually have a pat answer to a question that so fundamentally questioned the very purpose of my life.

Lucky for me, I had a lot of driving ahead of me. I needed to make a quick trip to Pennsylvania which gave me of uninterrupted thinking time.

The thing is, I could completely understand where Ann’s question was coming from. I grew up in the suburbs and owning a farm never even entered my mind for the first 30-odd years of my life. I had a successful career in New York City. I spent my weekend seeking out amazing restaurants and watching art film. I spent a fortune on the things women are suppose to crave- shoes, makeup and fancy sheets.

And it all left me feeling a little…hollow. I worked my rear end off at my job but I had nothing to show for it at the end of the day. I like to say that network news is like golf- nobody cares what you did yesterday. The accolades were amazing but they disappeared so very quickly. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing tangible that I could pick up and hold proudly over my head while proclaiming “I made this!”

For me, gardening and sewing and the like provide me with three thing: control, security and joy. Control, because I get to decide what goes into my food, which variety of tomato I grow, the way I want my clothes to fit, even what shape I want my pasta tonight. Being a shepherd has done nothing to lessen my Type A+ tendencies, but having more actual control has -weirdly- made me less controlling.

Security for me isn’t about preparing for the zombie apocalypse  or hoarding food and guns for Doomsday. I’m far more concerned about the fact that our food supply has become incredibly centralized, dominated by a handful of mega-corporations who control production and distribution. Our regional food systems have been all but destroyed in our quest for cheaper, more efficient food.

To make matters worse, the current system is eliminating hundreds of varieties of vegetables and fruits in the name of efficiency. 

Monocultures are never a good idea- remember the Great Potato Famine (or The Great Hunger as it is now known)?  The blight that killed all the potatoes in Ireland because they were only growing one variety?

One more thing. A few years ago, I spoke at a conference hosted by Cornell University on Agriculture Economics. The economist who spoke before me said something I found absolutely jaw-dropping. Grocery stores in America have a three day supply of food on hand. In other words, if anything happened to the supply chain, it would take three days to clear the shelves of the enormous supermarkets. Three days. Produce would be gone within 24 hours.

Does all of this mean that I want to grow and raise everything my family and staff need to survive? Of course not! I find myself running to the market every other day, just like most of you. My grocery list probably looks a lot like yours, although we buy considerably less in the Summer when our kitchen garden is in full production. But I do like feeling that we are at least a little self reliant, that we aren’t completely at the mercy of the weather and the economy.  In a recent New York Times article,  Sabrina Tavernise referred to vegetable gardens as “patches of protection in uncertain times.”  I think that sums it up perfectly.

I’ve saved the most important reason for last though- joy! Digging in the dirt and coaxing a salad from it feels amazing! Biting into a ripe tomato, still warm from the sun is an experience no one should miss.

I can bake bread that taste better than the bread I can buy and it’s almost free. The same is true for lots of other foods we eat- yogurt, ice cream, pasta, chicken stock. I could go one and on. Although we are still only novice cheese makers, our chèvre is creamy and delicious, and it has encouraged us to try all kinds of new cheeses. And did I mention that it’s almost free? I can make a pound of chèvre for pennies or pay $9 for 4 ounces at the market.

Making a piece of clothing that you can proudly wear out of the house made me feel like a million bucks. Your friends and coworkers with literally gasp when they find out you made your sweater. My friend Virginia taught me to make a simple skirt and I nearly burst with pride every time I wear it.  As if that weren’t enough, clothes you make fit better and look better on you, because they are tailored to you. Where is the downside?

I hope I’ve answered your question, Ann, and that you have at least a bit more insight into what we do. And I will admit without hesitation that I still love shoes, makeup and fancy sheets. I still spend weekends seeking out amazing restaurants (although my standards for amazing have gone way up) and I still love going to the movies. I’m just the same, only happier, more self-confident and more secure.

We lost power tonight for about four hours, so the while the website was up, the lambcams were down. They should be back up and working now.   Lambcam 1 is up and we’re working on 2 & 3.

Caroline, Zac and I love showing visitors around the farm. We’re very proud of what we’ve built here, and introducing excited shareholders and blog readers to the personalities they’ve met on the blog is always a treat. It’s lovely to see the farm through the eyes of others.

In the past, we’ve nearly always said yes to scheduled visits, even though most of them are from non-shareholders and non-knitters. In other words, non-customers. Someone is always at the farm and it always just kind of worked out.

Lately, though, we’ve been getting more and more requests for farm visits and having more and more people just stop by without an appointment or any notice. We have never been open to unscheduled visits, but it’s pretty uncomfortable to turn someone standing in front of you away, so we usually just show people around anyway.The thing is, it takes about an hour-and-a-half for us to show people around and send them on their way, which is fine is we have set that time aside, but isn’t when we have work to do.

Because, as much as we love what we do, this is work for us. All three of us work really hard all the time, and adding one more unexpected hour and a half activity to a day that is already packed is really just stressing our capabilities and patience to the limit.

Which brings us to the other issue. In addition to being the farm you love to visit vicariously through the internet, this is also our home. I have a duty to my staff to make sure that they can relax in own their home without being constantly on edge that someone may pull in the driveway at any moment. We’ve had carloads of people show up just as we were sitting down to dinner, as late as 8 p.m. It’s incredibly disruptive.

I’m probably over-expalining this, but I grew up in a house that was always open and welcoming to everyone. Hospitality was paramount to my grandmother and my mother. It goes against the very grain of my personality to say that someone can’t come for a visit.

Rather than putting the kibosh on non-shareholder visits all together, we are going to have a dedicated day for farm visits every month. From now on, on the first Saturday of each month we will be open for visits and tours from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. I know that this is going to mean that some people who are only in the area for a few days won’t be able to visit the farm if their schedule doesn’t line up with ours and am more sorry about that than you will ever know.  But we’re going to stick to this policy for non-shareholders very firmly. No one likes saying no, but I’m afraid we will be saying it.

I hope you can understand that this is a necessary change. I am incredibly grateful to each of you for reading and commenting on the blog, buying our yarn and shares, and offering your support and cheerleading when we need it. None of this is a reflection on my gratitude to you, which is vast and true.

ETA: I don’t believe that the people who’ve been stopping by are being intentionally impolite at all. They are just excited about seeing the animals and meeting us. We just aren’t set up to handle that kind of traffic.