we suck at this!

It would be so easy for me to lie to you about this. I'd just have to post pictures like this, without much comment.

It is a true thing that Eleanor the goat wandered up the hill and gave birth to two gorgeous baby girls on Friday. But if that were all I told you, you might think that most of my time is spent amongst the sweet and fluffy, and that would be a lie. A truer thing is that I missed Eleanor giving birth because I was elbow-deep scrubbing out unmentionable things from the water troughs. That's the sort of thing I spend most of my time doing. It's not nearly as photogenic, though.

We live in a barn. And I don't mean a yuppie barn converted into a 5000-square-foot castle of ironic quaintness. I mean a working barn, where animals eat and live and occasionally shit downstairs. Recently Jeremy commented, "There's straw in our dish water," to which I replied, "We live in a barn, honey. There's probably manure in there, too." Everything smells like hay and gets covered with dust two seconds after I clean it. The barn houses the milking parlor where Banjo hangs out at night trying to put fat on her skinny frame. Animal feed is stored in the barn, and a billion other odds and ends – Patrice is impossibly resourceful, and never throws anything away. I just try to have tunnel vision so my OCD won't compel me to organize the impossible.

We occupy 275 square feet of this enormous barn, upstairs where it's already sweltering in the afternoon. We have a pretty sweet homemade composting toilet, and our electricity comes from below, via a complicated system of extension cords. I'm learning to navigate the kitchen's limitations, but the learning curve is steep. I can only run one or two appliances at a time and the floor is less than ideal for how messy of a cook I am and we don't have running water, precisely – usually it's a hose through the window, running through a faucet into a wastewater bucket. At the moment there's no running water anywhere on the property because the well is dry, so most of our water is hauled up from the spring. I'm not going to pretend this isn't a challenging situation.

The mishaps have been limitless, ranging from the mildly comical to the downright awful. Like the first time I tried to cook pasta in our new limited kitchen and, while straining and rinsing it, tipped half of it out while marinating the other half in the delicacies present in wastewater, such as old coffee, toothpaste, and whatever comes off my hands when I come in from the chicken coop. Or the time Banjo stuck me in the belly with her horn and I was in such pain for two days I truly thought I might have internal bleeding. Or the time the animals conspired to ruin every aspect of the evening routine until I was so sweaty, exhausted, and frustrated that I literally threw up my hands and shouted at Jeremy, “WE SUCK AT THIS!”

I won't waste your time with the details. Just try to imagine two complete morons who have never had to work a day of manual labor in their lives trying to “manage” large farm animals without killing themselves. Yeah, it looks about like you might expect it would.

I know that we're going to figure this out. Things are already better. The milking machine works almost every time. Hamilton (the young steer) is adjusting to us, the chicken coop is cleaner, the dump pile (don't even ask) is slowly being carried away, many babies have been born without incident, and the garden is really coming together.

But this will never be easy. It will never be routine in the way things are routine when you work with computers all day or pour coffee or fill out paperwork for a living. Working with living creatures, in living systems, is a different beast altogether, one that strains my body and challenges my rationality in ways I could never have imagined when I was reading farming memoirs and dreaming of pastoral bean poles and hay bales. Like parenting, most of this work is exhausting labor that isn't necessarily fun or beautiful or inspiring. Scrubbing out the water troughs: that needs to be done. As does fencing and herding and slaughter. And when you see the goats racing for you while you're hauling the food pails, you've got to just drop that bitch and run. I lost ten pounds my first week here, and at least half of that was sweating from pure stress and panic and what the hell am I doing, what did I do wrong there, why can't I make this work...? 

I share this information with you not for the sake of bitching, but just to say that this shit is hard. We didn't move here to live "the simple life." This life could not be more complicated. I realize that most people would be unwilling to live like this. We had Internet service (however sporadic) before we had functional running water. We carry our waste down the stairs in buckets and our water up the stairs in bottles. I've had to use my inhaler more times in the past week than I have in the past several years.  

But I've also received a handful of emails in the past month from readers who are like me -- living on a limited income, unwilling to sell their souls for money, facing outrageously high land prices thanks to development pressure, and yet dreaming fiercely of farming -- who want to believe that alternatives exist. So I expose this to you, this mess, to show that they do. It won't be pretty or neat or clean, but you can make it happen. If the objective is not ownership but partnership -- not domination but cooperation -- not conformity but integrity -- alternatives exist.

The simple fact is that most people simply cannot afford to buy arable land. An acre in California goes for such an impossible amount of money it's almost mythological. An acre in Idaho or Montana or Nevada is more affordable, but less hospitable -- and it's still impossibly expensive for most people to afford outright (as is often required). So as the tide of "a million new farmers" rises, landsharing will become essential. It might even be the cornerstone of this new agriculture. I won't lie to you about what this might look like, because that wouldn't be fair. When I describe my situation, people tend to get hung up on all that I live without, while overlooking, or perhaps being unable to appreciate, all that I have, which is to say, everything I want.

This is an amazing opportunity, one that feels nearly holy in its import, but my days are not blissful. They are full of backbreaking manual labor and disappointment. I feel trapped in an undertow, unable to keep my head above the flood of projects I may never get finished. It's impossible to prioritize because not only is the list endless but everything needs to be done right now. Everything is essential -- except, perhaps, putting up walls in our studio so I don't have to look at the Grip-Rite wallpaper. That is not essential. Getting Hamilton wethered before he gets bigger than the people doing the wethering? That is essential. Putting up poly-tunnels so the chickens don't destroy my garden? That is essential. Fixing the fencing so the goats don't get run over by a car? ...you guessed it.

And in the process, I'm finding that I'm stronger than I thought possible. I can lift very heavy things, dig deep in the garden, haul a trailer, and find my way around a hardware store. I spend most of the day outside, not in front of a computer or cash register, not under fluorescent lights, not selling or buying things, but growing things, building things, making plans, and caring for living beings. This is a gift.

Still, I can't say I'm without doubt. Of course I have doubt. Of course I wonder if I'm making this unnecessarily hard. There's nothing wrong with supporting local agriculture instead of producing it. There's nothing wrong with renting an apartment and growing tomatoes in pots, or buying a suburban house and building a garden in the backyard. And yet, here I am, struggling and sometimes suffering, because what arches overhead is this thing, this farming thing... I'd stumble and mumble to explain it, and maybe it's a selfish wish that keeps me pushing for it, but my compass needle has been stuck in this direction for most of my life, so maybe it's inarguable.

A few nights ago I went outside with my camera hoping to catch some images of the absolutely stunning environment where I live. Banjo came up and surprised me by nudging me to guide her into the barn for her evening meal. When I first arrived she would hardly let me touch her. She shied away, tossing her horns to keep my hands off. The first time I milked her, she danced all over the place. Now she knows me as the caretaker. She follows me into the barn, and out of it; she abides my fumbling hands; she stands quietly while I brush her, and man, but the exhaustion of the day just rolls off my back while I brush her.

I sling an arm across her shoulders while guiding her into the barn at night and she leans into me, the two of us sharing warmth. I look up the hill at that streak of hopeful green earth and I can feel things falling into place with an almost audible click.

(This post is shared at Simple Lives.)