I don’t have time to write. Absolutely, positively do not. In fact, I gotta go. Just kidding, but in all honesty, time is my most precious commodity. Before we moved to this hot slice of heaven we call home, I was one busy lady. A year ago, we lived in a 1200 sq ft, 2 bedroom town home, in coastal Encinitas with a 7 year-old, 5 year-old, a combustible 1 year-old and a same age puppy. My amazing husband worked (still does) three 12-hour shifts as an ER nurse and I ran (still do) my fourth baby, Speech-N-Motion, Inc. as a pediatric speech therapist. Between all the people and jobs, we were always running around, but things got done. Then we said “let’s build a farm.” Now we’re just running around.
Why bother sharing this with you? You are busy too (and if you are not, I’d like to hear your secrets). I realize that documenting the process of turning a brown patch of land into something productive and beautiful might be worth looking back on. Also, I can assure anyone who gets discouraged after they kill their first veggie crop that it ain’t all rainbows and fairies- it’s a learning curve no matter how long you’ve been growing. I’ve spent the past 9 months killing everything trying to figure out the new climate in Escondido. Sigh.
But here we are, 35-ish chickens, 5 ducks, 2 pregnant goats, 2 dogs, a cat, a rooster, a horse, 3 kids and a partridge in a pear tree. It’s beyond hot in the summer and chilly cool in the winter. It’s quiet and loud at the same time. It steals all of our time, vision, sleep, and resources and then it takes more. It turns out building a farm is not at all as romantic as we envisioned. In our dreams, RoseHaven was a beautiful, productive farm that fed our family, friends and community and is home to garden-to-table feeding therapy and a farm stand run by my neurodiverse” friends. The reality is that building infrastructure ain’t sexy at all. It isn’t productive and it isn’t beautiful. It’s dirt and manure and wood chips and irrigation and fencing and digging and digging and digging and organizing the budget for a million projects that don’t pay for themselves…..while carrying around a 2-year old whose favorite sayings are “NO!” “Don’t talk to me like that,” and “I want up.”
So, let’s raise a coffee for poor judgment and less-than-stellar adult choices. It’s been a wonderful break. Now it’s time to get back to work.
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