Milestones & passages

A ceremonial burning of a loan schedule ...

A ceremonial burning of a loan schedule …

As I mentioned at in last week’s newsletter, this month marks a big milestone for us: it’s been ten years since we bought the land where we live and farm.

Folks, ten years feels like a long, long time. A decade! Since Casey and I are only in our mid-30s, decades feel like a new way to measure time in our adult life.

So much has changed since we bought this land. Our farm is now such a lively, interesting place, but in 2006 we purchased 17.5 acres of bare farmland without any improvements. The only items of note breaking up the expanse of field were a few very ancient trees at the old homesite (where there was no home, but where we built one the next winter). Casey and I remember standing in our big open field and pondering all that could happen there. We even remarked many times, “We have no idea what this farm will look like in ten years.” No, we really didn’t. There are buildings, orchards, greenhouses, and fields that have grown so many crops to feed our community. What a decade it has been — so full and rich with good work, creativity, friendship, and growth.

But, even just our acquisition of this land was a journey in its right. Back in 2006, we were even younger … 24 and 26, freshly out of graduate school, with no credit of any kind and no significant business history. We were not in a good position to qualify for a loan at all, let along for bare farmland, which banks only lend on in particular circumstances (to our credit, a few years later, in 2011, we did obtain a bank loan on the piece of land next door based on our farm’s financial records! But that’s a different story …).

Casey and Jonny building stuff on our first rented land in 2006 ... ten years ago!

A photo from the farm archives: Casey and our college friend Jonny building stuff on our first rented land in 2006 … ten years ago!

So, how could we buy this land we had fallen in love with? With the help of friends and family. My parents helped with some of it, and a friend from college surprised us by offering to loan us the rest that we needed. What a friend! And, so, we took that very big plunge … going from credit and debt-free 20-somethings to mortgage and land-owning budding farmers. It was a big leap. It felt big at the time, and perspective has only heightened our awareness of how much we were taking on in terms of responsibilities.

But, it worked. We’ve never ever regretted investing ourselves in this place and work so early on in our life. We built our house, had children here, hosted countless gatherings of friends … That investment was big, but it was SO worth it.

And, since then, we’ve paid our monthly payments. And months added up to years, and years added up to a decade, and as of this month, we have made our last payment back to Jonny, our college friend. He visited this last weekend so that we could celebrate the occasion together (it also served as a perfect excuse to visit for the first time in several years). We took him out to a delicious dinner at Thistle, hiked around the island, and mutually pondered the passage of time. On Sunday before he drove back up to Seattle, we printed out the loan amortization schedule we made ten years ago, and we burned it!

Paying off this one big loan feels profoundly significant. We still have two others to work on over the next some odd number of years, but we finished one. The completion feels amazing. We also enjoy again contemplating our gratitude for the gift of this land. It’s a happy decade anniversary all around.

In different but related news, we observed another kind of passage on Monday as we sent our last cow and five sheep to the butcher. These were our very last four-legged animals on the farm. The only animals we have left to tend are our laying hens, and they are scheduled to go to the butcher on the final week of the CSA (for stewing hens).

We’ve had livestock on the farm for five years now — just about half of our farm experience! I already wrote a newsletter a few months ago about the decision to move on from livestock (for now, at least), so I don’t need to revisit those reasons again now. But this week that plan became more real, and we are again profoundly aware of this passage. In this case, saying good-bye to a part of our farm that was both rich and rewarding as well as intensely stressful and heavy (at times). But we look forward to the new opportunities the change opens up for us as a family this winter and as a farm into the future.

So, it was a double-whammy here on the farm of emotional milestones and passages! In so many ways, it feels like our farm is at a turning point. Which of course, we really always have been. Ten years ago, we stood in our big field pondered what a decade would hold. In the intervening years, there have been times when I thought the mystery had been solved — that we had figured out what our farm and life would look like forever and ever. But, lo and behold, each year brings new changes, losses, surprises, and gifts, and the landscape continues to change, just as we do too.

Perhaps even more so than that first fall here on the land, I again have that sense of open wonder about the future. Except now I feel less urgency about figuring it out. I feel more comfortable and at ease with the inevitable unknowability of the future. I feel more at ease with just knowing who we are and what we are doing today. Our children are growing so fast, and perhaps some of my changed perspective is just that parental impulse to want to slow down time and cherish every single moment we have as a family now. Either way, the next decade looks as foggy as ever, and yet I feel excited about the gifts I know lie ahead, whatever they are. The gifts of growth on the farm, in our family, and in our relationships beyond. We are grateful.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Final CSA payment due by September 22! I emailed everyone updated account statements this last week. Please let me know if you have any questions about the amount due. You can bring us a check or cash to pick-up, or mail a check to us: Oakhill Organics, P.O. Box 1698, McMinnville OR 97128.

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

  • Grapes — More Concord grapes! Contain seeds!
  • Plums
  • Chehalis apples
  • Salad mix
  • Juliet tomatoes — These little plum roma tomatoes are some of our all-time favorite. They are a true all-purpose tomato — flavorful enough for eating fresh on salads, but they also make delicious (sweet) sauce and dry up beautifully.
  • Heirloom tomatoes
  • Sweet peppers
  • Collard greens
  • Beets w/greens — The greens on these beets are enormous so we are considering them one of our “cooking green” options this week (the beets are beautiful too). Did you know that beets and chard are actually the same species of plant? They were just selected for different purposes in the garden and kitchen. But you can use beet greens as you would use chard in any recipe with delicious results.
  • Carrots
  • Nicola potatoes — These are one of our new favorite potatoes in recent years. They have smooth yellow flesh like a German butterball, but the skin is not “russetted.” Delicious for roasting.
  • Zucchini

And this week’s extra goodies from the farm: More beef and lamb are coming soon! In the meantime, we want to clean out our freezer, so come on down for our:

  • Odds & Ends sale! — All remaining pork, beef, and lamb organs/bones/fat are ON SALE for $2/lb! We have lots of beef bones especially — stock up for making stock for the coming cold season!
  • Eggs — $6/dozen
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