How Many Loaves of Bread Does a Fence Post Cost?
Sonya at the Bastille Day Celebrations in Frenchtown. 📸 Karma Strydesky
The farm stand has been open a few months now, and word is slowly spreading. We sold out of bread again today and every time that happens it feels like a small victory. My heart sings. For a time there I baked bread, and it rained. I baked bread, and it rained again. Daily, I took excess bread to friends and neighbors and forced them into bread comas. And I had no idea that the success of my fledgling homesteading venture was so weather dependent, but it really is. The rain started to feel like a metaphor for potential failure.
It’s been a season, my friends, one weird-ass season. I don’t even know what to call it. It’s rained and stormed and the humidity makes you feel like you’re walking around enveloped in a wet blanket. It’s alternately cool and crisp as if fall is imminent, and then the heat index flips a switch and we’re feeding the chickens frozen watermelon and popping ice-cubes in everyone’s water dish. This, after an epic winter that had me hand depositing 800 pounds of ice-melt down our quarter-mile-long driveway while my wife recovered from emergency surgery. The weather has felt insane. I have never been so excited about the acquisition of equipment before, but our used tractor made me cry. Tears. Imagine winter and snow and ice and the ability to get down one’s driveway no matter what! Wow.
Folks don’t wander too far in inclement weather. Not in these parts anyway, where inclement weather usually means a downed tree limb or two, blown transformers, and probably the loss of power or difficulty getting home through swift river flooding. Actually, the rate at which we lose power on the farm is kind of alarming. It’s to the point where we can feel the shift in air pressure and say, “yup, losing power tonight.” Fortunately our lengthy—but ultimately successful—installation of propane and subsequently a propane-ready generator, on the farm is paying out DAILY. My stove top and oven are propane. We cook and bake no mater what. There is hot water and oven activity and window air conditioning units. Showers and dishwasher use and refrigeration. I dare say the folks who walked these floors 300 years ago didn’t have it so good. I need only look toward the spring house— where the milk cans used to be delivered by the back stoop (but now is just a mystifying pond-basement-spring house water system puzzle that needs to be solved)—to know that we have it good. We have the glory of beautiful sunsets and great blue heron fishing and eagle flights with not nearly as much of the hardships of old-time farm life.
Our barns are slowly coming along. The journey to bring our two baby horses home is ongoing. It’s such a lofty goal, too. So lofty that it feels impossible most days. I’ve started to think of currency in terms of loaves of bread. How many loaves of bread is one fence post? It takes three days for me to make a loaf of our sourdough. It’s an art and it’s a love. To feed people something as basic and earthy as bread does something to my soul. Even more so from these ancient farm-house rooms. And now I start to think of this endeavor as personal as I shoot toward fence posts. I bake and I bank fence post funds. I’m fermenting a yeast from the air around me, building structure in flour and water, bulk fermenting, cold retarding, flavor developing, and rushing this unfinished form to the heat of my oven. Everyone who visits our farm stand is now part of our home as they consume our bread. They build this farm with us.
Right now our baby horses are in Pennsylvania at a ranch being broken. They are both a little over two-years-old, and as baby brained as young horses can be. They learn every day and we visit a few times each week to groom them and watch their progress and lament the loaves of bread they cost us. It’s both thrilling and humbling and inspiring. Our hearts walking around on four legs giving us anxiety and love and sloppy horse kisses.
It’s an unconventional life we’ve chosen, the success of which is ultimately dependent on our own spirit and determination. Every day I must take a moment to stop and look around me, place a hand on something tangible here and feel that connection to the land, the history, and the purpose and heart of it’s being here. We are indeed the lucky ones. Onward.
Baby Hemingway taking a nap
