Ahem!!

After my initial post, I realized that I should go back to the beginning and explain what led me to the decision to volunteer at the Garden of Eve and more importantly, why I think a life as a farmer is in my future.

For the last several years, I have been contemplating what I want to do with the last third of my life.  I lived in Tampa until I was 30, then moved to NYC and have now been in NYC for the past 20 years.  I feel it's time to move on, but I haven't been able to figure out just what it is that I want to do. I thought perhaps teaching, but I don't think I have the patience for the political nonsense that goes on in our educational system. For a time, I thought that I wanted to go back to school and get a degree in Interior Design.  I really love design and I'm pretty good at interior design without having any formal training. But, the design world, like many others, loves youth and starting a business in interior design would probably mean staying in NYC and I'm convinced that it's time for me to go. Then, I thought I might get certified as a yoga instructor and move to Venezuela and build a yoga retreat/posada with my ex-husband, Luis. Hmmm, that didn't quite work out either. To become a certified yoga instructor, the training requires a big time commitment that I'm not really ready to make. Do I love it that much? I like yoga a lot, but no, not that much! So, still searching...

Then, in a "catching up" conversation with my friend, Kitty, she randomly mentioned that she had stayed at her sister's farm last fall.  My ears perked up.  "Your sister's farm? What farm? I thought she was a landscape architect?"  Apparently, Kitty's sister had decided to start an organic farm outside of Atlanta and her mother and brother had both moved to the farm too to help her out.  (They live in separate living quarters on the other side of the farm.) Wow!  We talked about it a little bit, but the seed had been planted.  The more I thought about it, the more I thought "Wow! I could do this!"

Now at this point, I have to go back to the VERY beginning.

When I was 9, my parents adopted my mom's nieces and nephew as their mom, her sister, had been killed in a car accident.  They came to live with us and it was quite an adjustment for everyone.  My parents had been designing a new house out in the country and the house now needed to be redesigned to accommodate the extra kids, which meant it would also be more expensive to build.  My mom had a great job and was actually one of the first women Chamber of Commerce presidents in the US.  However, my sisters and brother needed a lot of supervision: my youngest sister was diagnosed with amblyopia (lazy eye) and needed intensive therapy to try to correct her vision; my other sister had a lot of psychological issues connected to her mother's death and needed intensive psych therapy. We all needed dental work.  Plus, my father had had his first heart attack when I was seven and had a lot of medical expenses. My mom had to give up her job.  Something had to give, so, we planted about half of our property and had a huge garden.  A few years later, my parents bought the property across the street (an acre) and we completely  planted that as well.  We had about an acre and a half planted as well as the orange trees, grapefruit trees, grapevines, pecan trees and whatever else my mom decided to plant (fig trees, avocado trees, etc.).  My parents were also semi-hippies, so we were into composting long before you could buy a composter at Home Depot.  We had chickens and turkeys and we also had earthworm beds. (!)

As we all left the nest, the area that was planted became smaller and smaller until there was really nothing left. My dad's health was in decline so he was really incapable of using the rototiller and my brother wasn't around, so everything was lying fallow, until.....

I took a break between my sophomore and junior years of college and lived at home again ("What do you mean a 1 am curfew?!") I planted a 10x10 garden that was super productive because I had read a book about how to do it. (won't go into it here - the process was too lengthy to describe). I loved every minute of my garden and was sorry to say goodbye when I went back to college the following year.

So, I had a pretty extensive background in gardening prior to moving to NYC.  Even here, I have always had containers on my fire escape with herbs and flowers. So, when Kitty mentioned farming - now you can better understand why I had that "aha!" moment.