Happy New Year from the Crazy Crew at Air’s Wild Acres!
I *love* this time of year. We all commonly think of it is as a time for new beginnings, thanks to the change in calendar year. However, as a January baby, I also have an opportunity to reflect on life generally and think about all the ways I can continue to grow and challenge myself as I age, both on the farm and off of it. Randomly, I seem to start jobs and end big things in the first quarter of the calendar year (January 7 was my 5-year anniversary with my current job, and January 8 was my 8th anniversary of finishing my doctorate), so clearly I find it to be a productive time and one for achieving new life goals.
Not to be melodramatic and to over commit when I am already over committed, but I am extremely excited for 2024. The past few years have felt like a time for recovery and status quo, as in, how do I relearn to live when the pandemic changed so much, including my fundamental world view in some ways. I also feel like I’ve been throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, trying to figure out exactly what “farming” looks like for me, and understanding my place in the agroecosystems of the Sierra Nevada Foothills. It reminds me of the late night and early morning writing sessions for my dissertation: just get it all down on paper, little by little, and edit down and figure out what matters later.
And the later is now. In the first few weeks of this year, I’ve already edited so much at the property: my fencing (fencing will never end, but at least now I have a clear vision of what’s feasible, the best materials for our property, and ways to streamline), planted a new indoor succulent garden, added a retaining wall to allow for better soil and habitat management, cut down and burned a ton of brush (which also means I got my first poison oak of the year, eye roll), happily received a greenhouse as a birthday present, started drawing down the gallons of milk in the freezer by making cheese, and planned non-food ways to use the milk. Big things are coming my friends, I hope you’re ready.
With all that said, and while my enthusiasm for the month is running high right now, I used to hate January, primarily in my 20s. Due to life circumstances beyond my control (being a middle child, for one), I’m a recovering high-strung maladaptive perfectionist, and I often found times for <<waves hands>> new beginnings extremely stressful. Instead of seeing the opportunity for novel activities that came with changing seasons for example, or the wisdom gained from aging another year, I saw the new year and my birthday as a reminder of everything I hadn’t done in my life, of delayed growth and missed milestones and metrics. My 20s were tumultuous, filled with term-limited jobs and an unclear career path, many moves within California and outside of it, the Great Recession, student loans, and who knows what else. I had no clear vision for what life was supposed to look like, and no guidance or support for how to figure it out, and I suspect this is common among first generation college attendees. How could I be excited about what’s new or next when I felt like I barely knew what was happening presently in my life?
So what happened? Why do I now find this time of year so refreshing and can see it as a helpful reset? I suspect a lot of therapy had something to do with it, to get over both my high-strung nature and my maladaptive perfectionism. However, as I am now in my early 40s and have spent the last decade actively checking out of what society expects of us and looking for alternatives to the US’ obsession with busy culture, I am now more prepared to seek out what *I* want out of life instead of trying to match my expectations with that of whomever the dominant thought leaders are in this country at the time. And that means January is a time for two of my favorite activities: coming up with ideas for new projects and planning how to do them (nevermind the implementation piece, we’ll figure that out later).
Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up the momentum over the next few months. My dwarf Nigerian dairy goats are pregnant and will give birth in the coming weeks, so at the very least, I’ll have plenty of fresh milk to use for new cheese varieties and other experiments.
Air's Wild Acres 