Dean and I are celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary this week. It has also been eight years since moving to this farm. Before settling here I moved every few years or sometimes even months in my young, adult life. Now, these eight years seem like nothing. A blink. Time has flown by and in many ways I feel like we are just getting started.
Well, not really. We have put our blood, sweat, and tears into this place. It has been so joyful and also so very hard, transforming this hobby farm into a working business. I have started and stopped things, changed course multiple times, and we are still learning about what we can create here. Love takes time. Love is beautiful and challenging. Love is a verb.
We launched our creamery last year and in a month or so the lambs will return and we will be back into our cheesemaking and farming routine. We didn’t get married in February by accident. February is precious time for us. Valentine’s Day, our anniversary, and President’s Day weekend signal the end to our down season. I’ve been doing a lot of inside work–writing, teaching, wrapping my brain around new food safety regulations, taxes.
As I organized my office I found my old, pre-iphone camera tucked in the back of a drawer. I gave it to our 3-year old to take some pictures. When I scrolled back through her cute, toddler-view-of-the-world images, I realized that the camera also had pictures on it from our first year at the farm. I am posting some below because they remind me of why I love it here and how transformative that first year was for us. We had a handful of sheep, big dreams, a new kitten and lots of weeds!
On this Valentine’s Day may you appreciate all the places, people, and critters you love in your life.
(Wedding pic by M.Dotson)