I’m really beginning to wonder and ponder, that I may have been a farmer in another life. Maybe you didn’t expect me to say this. I sometimes wonder what goes on inside of this head of mine too, wondering where in the world these thoughts come from?
Right now I’m reading Cold Antler Farm-A memoir of Growing Food and Celebrating Life on a Scrappy Six-Acre Homestead by Jenna Woginrich. I’ve also read two of her other books, One-Woman Farm: My Life Shared with Sheep, Pigs, Chickens, Goats, and a Fine Fiddle and Barnheart: The Incurable Longing for a Farm of One’s Own. I’m thoroughly enjoying her new book as much as I loved her last two.
Last night as I was reading Cold Antler Farm this is when the thought came to me that I may have been a farmer in a different life, just like Jenna. I love that she calls herself a farmer, as well as, a true homesteader. She owns the titles beautifully. Maybe that is part of my attraction to her.
She is in her early 30s and there is no question when you read about her life on her small farm that she is a woman determined, committed, and strong in the skin she was born in.
But I also know it is the animals I’m attracted to. The two working horses, the goats, the sheep, the pigs, geese, rabbits, bees, and her border collie, Gibson. If her brood included donkey’s, a Labrador, and a dachshund, I just might have to build a tiny home right on her property and live there!
Her descriptions of her gardens and her daily chores calms me for some reason. Maybe it is in the routine and solitude that I like of Jenna’s life. But I can say what I wouldn’t like is being a true farmer in the sense of having to dock new born lamb tails, send pigs to slaughter, and the muck and slop of spring thaw. I’m also very allergic to hay and since many of the animals need that to eat and bed down in, well, I’m afraid I’d have an inhaler permanently attached to my mouth for my asthma.
Pondering all this I think perhaps I’d still love a hobby farm with two miniature donkey’s, some chickens, and a goat or two. Maybe this will be in my next life. I hope by that time I’ve either let go of the asthma I have or they make allergy free hay.
But for now I live as a farmer and homesteader through the writing of Jenna as she celebrates and embraces life to the fullest on her scrappy farm. And dream of wearing dresses and perwinkle rain boots while brushing my donkey’s, milking my goats, and gathering eggs from my chicken’s on the little hobby farm in the next realm of my life.