The stubborn math nerd in me wants the phrase to be "Fall down n times, get up n+1".
Because I don't know how many times I've fallen over the past few years. Both the literal falls (I still have a scar on my rear from landing on the tiller tines) and the figurative. I've been lied to, stolen from, quit on and had so much time wasted. I've declared bankruptcy, sold my house and had my car apparently repossessed to keep this farm, this vision alive.
But at the end of the day, I don't know how to not be a farmer anymore. I was a mathematical modeler and data scientist. That was five years ago. Those skills have long atrophied out of date. And to be honest, I was never a great employee. My best jobs were research projects where I had lots of latitude to investigate and report my findings. There were two of them, both when I was in school. I've never been able to find that sort of satisfaction anywhere other than the farm.
So what do I do when I keep staggering back upright only to be knocked back down again? In the latest round, it's the church trying to almost triple my rent and reduce the growing space I lease by a third, followed by Volkswagen's unilateral decision to stop negotiating with me about adjusting my car loan, attempting to repossess the car, and completely screwing up the process so that now, 48 hours later, I still don't know whether my car was repossessed or stolen.
I have options on all fronts, and who knows, maybe this will finally lead to me landing in a more sustainable place. Maybe I will look back on this in five years and see it as the time I hit bottom. But what do I change to get there? I made the decision to invest the proceeds from my house into the u-pick strawberry field knowing that it would help me get to that space where I'm paying myself and others. I took a calculated risk that I could squeeze through one more winter on next to nothing, and now I find myself making lists of who might loan me a thousand dollars to get another car now and let me pay them back with strawberry money in May.
I'm talking with other growers about moving my vegetable production off site to preserve my strawberry field and not pay the ridiculous price the church is trying to charge me. I'm trying to figure out what the hell happened to my car, and how I'm going to get to the farm to feed the animals once my housemate gets back tomorrow night and needs his truck back. I'm doing what's in front of me because, knocked down or not, the animals have to eat and I can't conceive of life without growing food. I still think the long term bet I made on the strawberries will be the foundation for a much more sustainable farm future... I'm just not sure yet how the pieces fall into place for me to get there.
