Ideas are a powerful thing. Have you ever allowed a totally wacky idea come into your head--something you'd never dreamed of before? Or maybe you'd dreamed of it but you thought you'd never be able to make it happen or that it might only happen way off in the future; but then the idea took root and you started thinking about how it MIGHT just be possible?
Ideas can lead to life transformation in positive and negative ways. Not all ideas would be wise to pursue while others could lead to fruitfulness in your life.
I remember when we were living in the suburbs with no lawn left, because the garden had gobbled up the entire lawn and wishing for a way to homestead in the country. We were thinking it was a decade or two away before we could pay off the house and save enough to pay cash for the future farm. Getting completely out of debt would have been a really good thing but then we had this idea that by the time we could do that, our kids would be grown up and would miss out on the opportunity to enjoy the outdoor farm life. So we started looking for places and we were blessed with the foreclosed weed-overgrown horse farm we call home today.
Then I was working full-time and doing the part time farming thing for several years, making lots of mistakes along the way (like failing to completely close up all the beehive box holes before taking a 20 minute trip on the highway and basically having a cloud of thousands of angry bees surrounding the truck as we drove through the property stinging all the dogs and children in sight. Do you remember the old cartoons where they'd show an angry swarm of bees that would go into fighter plane formation and then machine-gun shoot actual bees at the behind of a running Daffy Duck? It was basically like that!).
And then we got this crazy idea that it might be possible to farm full-time as a family. "What if it was possible to make a living farming?" At first we thought of the possibility as something far off on the horizon; a sort of early retirement. But again we were hit by the idea that now was the time. So we started making accelerated plans. One year into our 10-year plan, it had shrunk to a 5-year plan. After another year the 5 year plan shrank into let's do it NOW. And 15 months ago, I quit my safe corporate job and we made the leap!
Were we "ready"? Are we every truly "ready?" If by "ready" we mean, everything is perfectly in place and there is absolutely no risk at all in the change, then we will never be "ready."
Ideas are dangerous! This past year has been a really good and stretching year for our family. We knew it would be a lot of work, and it is. But we wouldn't want it any other way! We look back at our lives (ok we aren't that old and we hope to have a lot more to look back over some day) and we see these little points of decision where we think, "Where did that idea come from?" and "Where would we be today if that little idea hadn't formed, festered and grown into something that spurred us to action, something that changed our world?"
What dangerously cataclysmic ideas are mulling around in your head? Is there something crazy that you think you could do that would make the world a better place AND improve the quality of life (maybe not all financial) for you and your loved ones? How can you serve others with the talents, skills and joys you have? In a world where all the news is about the problems around us, what's something you can do to work toward solving something tangible within your sphere of influence?
Let's nurture those dangerous, good ideas and see where they lead.
Thanks for being part of our CSA and making our idea of healing the land, feeding people nature's goodness and getting to know our community a reality!
Your Farmers,
Dave and Sheri
