THE SHORT STORY

I grew up on a dairy farm in Massachusetts. My great grandfather immigrated to the United States from Holland and eventually went from working on a Dutch farm to buying the farm and starting his own business. As a kid I was always very proud of what my great grandfather, and then what my grandfather and father continued to do, but I never saw myself as the farm type. Sure, I could work hard and I liked animals but that was about it.

As a teenager my plan was to escape the farm. I got a part-time job off the farm, but at the time it was made clear to me that if I wanted to work my part-time job I still had work to do at home. Eventually, my on farm responsibilities got smaller and my part-time job became my almost only job. Of course, I still had to bale hay, work in the farm store every other Sunday and peddle milk before school when employees called out but for the most part my work on the farm was limited.

 

When I got close to graduating from high school my goal was to go to a college out-of-state, and get a degree so that I didn’t have to work on the farm, and so I did. But what I discovered was that maybe it wasn’t so bad and as I approached college graduation, I started thinking about the farm. Was it possible I missed it?

 

My final year of college my parents sold the farm and so the decision to return to the farm seemed wasn’t in my cards. For a moment my brother tried to purchase the farm but having just graduated from college himself, financially it was not really in the cards for him either. I remember my dad saying that my brother was the only one who was really interested in the farm. And for a second I thought, “Is that really true? Maybe that could have been me.” But I pushed the thought aside, having already started my post-college career and agreed that he was probably right.

I lived close to the city and took a big job that required me to take two trains each way to go to work. I liked the work but the commute was terrible! I bought a house but it was crammed between two other houses with taxes that were too high and seemed to pay for nothing. And, no yard. Did I mention, no yard? I had what seemed like a ten by ten square yard with concrete stairs in the middle and a chain link fence as privacy. But it was ok, because I took those trains to work every day, which virtually left me no time to enjoy the yard anyway.

 

Finally, in 2016 after my second child was born, my husband and I decided we needed a change. We literally packed up what we could fit in a small U-Haul trailer and drove to North Carolina completely site-unseen to try something new. Today, we have been in North Carolina for five years and what a breath of fresh air!

 

When we first came to North Carolina we rented to make sure we liked the area. Once we decided we did like the area, we bought a home. Our house was BEAUTIFUL….and on less than a quarter acre…in an HOA...with like 300 other houses! What were we thinking?!?! So yeah, we sold that house and bought a tiny home (not like the ones on TV, the ones you can actually live in) and we have 7 acres where we are starting our own homestead!!!!

 

And so, through this whole process, here is what I have learned:

• No matter what you might think as a farm kid, things are always better on a farm,

• You can take the girl off the farm but you can’t take the farm out of the girl, and

• When it comes down to it, my heart and soul are in farming because that is just who I am.

 

So, join me on this adventure because let’s be honest, at this point it has been about 20 years since I have done the whole farm thing, and I have a lot of learning to do.