An Origin Story

Like Spiderman, but with less "superhero" and more "tiny farm mid-life crisis"

There are thousands of urban farming accounts on social media. They're calming and gravitational, selling us on aspirational bucolic lifestyles in muted greens and beiges with a perfectly-placed artistic pop of color. Those content creators live where happy chickens peck around baby goats and fuzzy cows frolic through verdant pastures, all set to the latest trending audio.

As with every other influencer category, “farmfluencer” accounts are just snapshots of a more complex and bigger picture. Like a thousand quotes taken out of context, social media does what social media always does - it offers a copy of a copy of reality. But too many filters have been applied, and the saccharine brightness leaves that weird aftertaste.

After almost 20 years in an industry where no number of filters can hide the ugliness - politics - I, too, yearned for that country life. Like many other farm Instagram content consumers, I romanticized a future full of lush gardens and cute animals. I dreamed of serving friends and family stunning gourmet meals made from my labors and that no one would yell at me upon learning my profession. Who yells at an urban goat and chicken farmer?

Last week, I wrote a piece about the unexpected death of my Dad five years ago. I found him the night before we closed on this house, where I could finally become an "urban farmer" - making it an emotionally erratic time for our family.

After writing that piece, I received hundreds of messages on various platforms (it's still my goal to respond to each one) and saw the largest influx of new subscribers in the 20 months I've been writing here. Because so many new readers came via the piece last week, I thought it would be good to reintroduce myself and this space.

First off, welcome. Thank you for being here.

*Record scratch* "Yup. That's me; you might be wondering how I ended up in this situation."

There is something primal and fundamental at the core of humanity that yearns to create, control, and understand - especially our food. During the pandemic, the entire country started baking as if responding to the hive mind, like bees with ovens who found comfort in warm loaves cooling in a million kitchens.

The combination of historically unprecedented wealth, a society further removed from our food sources than ever before, and a healthy dose of societal unease has created a class of the "farming curious." Those who didn't necessarily grow up in agriculture but dreamed of a big garden, fresh eggs, and homemade cheese are taking the plunge, fueled by remote work and a longing to create something "real." Largely they have no idea what they’re doing, and I am among them.

In the piece about my Dad's death last week, I wrote about how I didn't know who to call and come and pick me up when reduced to nothing more than a grief puddle on the floor. Although it was one of my worst moments, it was also a watershed. Until then, the most significant part of my identity was politics. Although I had been bumping up against the edges of it, I couldn't understand why I was losing my enthusiasm.

Moving to a few acres and learning (and failing) in urban farming has reignited my love for everything else. We started with some quail, then ducks, got some free chickens, then guinea fowl, expensive chickens, and finally goats. After that first taste of fresh, homemade goat cheese, I was forever changed.

Fresh cheese is as far removed from store cheese as a homegrown tomato is from one in the produce aisle. This is not a denigration of large-scale food production, by the way, which is the modern miracle platform upon which our entire society is built. If anything, the insane amount of work that goes into producing small batches of food should give us a renewed appreciation for an agriculture industry that has gone for too long without the praise it deserves. That's farmers for you, though - quietly toiling in the background to feed the rest of the country, who are all busy yelling at each other on Twitter.

Within a few months of getting goats, I became pregnant with our second son. Pregnancy with a toddler, farm chores, and a job is an entirely different creature than as a childless workaholic politico with a suburban home. Having so many entities reliant on me for their existence forced me to rise to the occasion. A goat who must be milked doesn't care if you're tired, hungry, or have already thrown up seven times that day.

Shortly after our second son was born, my husband offered to take both boys while I traveled to our close friends' wedding in Napa, California. There, sharing a house with some of my besties and imbibing for the first time since getting pregnant, I accepted a less-than-totally-sober bet to live off what we produce on this little urban farm for an entire year.

Because we are nothing if not extra, my friends and I left that wedding weekend with an entire set of rules for the challenge, and one of the grooms had even dubbed it "The Homegrown Year."

Much of the next ten months were spent in preparation for the challenge. We added a greenhouse, a massive chicken coop (dubbed Big Jim's Poultry Palace, after my Dad), got bigger goats, turkeys, a freeze dryer, pigs, and put in a vast garden. Somehow, through all that, I managed to convince my husband to stay married.

I did the year and emerged an enlightened and lightened version of myself. It was the hardest and most gratifying personal challenge I've undertaken (I'm still only partway through marriage and parenting, so those are still in the TBD column.)

A little over a month after finishing The Homegrown Year, I was laid off from my political media job. The next day I started this Substack. In it, I try to capture love, humor, work, and heartbreak with varying degrees of success.

Someday, maybe someday soon, I will be able to make this my full-time job, and I'll be a goat writer. Or, perhaps the AIs will take over all the writing for everybody before I get there.

Being an urban farmer has changed me. It's hardened the parts of me that were too soft and softened the pieces of my heart that were too hard. I've recaptured the almost childlike wonder at the emergence of new life and borne witness to life's end in a way that grounds me. This Substack is the space to share that with you.

Thank you for being here. Welcome. Cheese is basically magic. Eat more of it.

---

This week I joined one of my best girlfriends,

MKHammer Time

on her podcast, Getting Hammered. We decided the correct mantle for us is "Red Pilled Hippies" - check it out!

I’ve started publishing a few things on Substack Notes, and would love for you to join me there! It’s likely to turn mostly into spicy farm memes.

---