Greetings!

It's been a while, eh?  Six months? Yikes.

Once, when we were much, much younger, my brother and I watched Braveheart on VHS. I'd never seen it before, and for whatever reason I/we didn't want to watch the whole thing...so he put it on fast-forward from the beginning and just told me everything that happened. 

I won't bore you with the details, but my last six months in fast-forward would look something like this:
Moved back to Ames. Got a job with the Iowa Farmers Union. Bought an adorable little car named Frida (yes, after my goat...plus she's red and was covered in leftist bumper stickers). Started volunteering at Practical Farmers of Iowa, then got offered a part time job doing office stuff for them. Went to some conferences on farming stuff. Fell in love with native pollinators.  Went to the dentist for the first time in I-won't-tell-you-how-long. Got new glasses, found several white hairs on my head and learned that I will need to get hearing aids sooner-than-later. Really.
...Then moved up to Kanawha, IA where I'm now working on a vegetable farm.

And there were no needlessly lengthy or gory fight scenes.

This farm is less than half the size of last year's farm.  It's less mechanized, far fewer members, noticeably more low-key and deeply committed to the farm as natural habitat.  I had more questions in the first two weeks here than I did in the first two months up north...I think mostly because I now have something to compare it to...But also because a lot of things are done really differently.  The tractors are also bigger, the land is less flat, and my awareness of my mortality has markedly increased.  Eek. 

I'm really excited about the season though...especially now that my goal of starting my own farm is surprisingly close to becoming reality.  I plan to start renting land beginning this fall...in preparation for starting my own small operation in spring of 2013.  Nothing like a deadline to make me realize how much I don't know and how incredibly unprepared I am.  Despite the doubts and insecurities, I'm working on a business plan, sending out feelers for potential market opportunities, and working on my budget.

I think last year's farm was an absolutely fabulous introduction to just about every major aspect of running a vegetable farm: learning good habits for solid production systems, getting familiar a wide array of machinery, setting up irrigation systems, and having super knowledgeable plant-people on hand to pester with horticultural and soil health questions.  Another huge thing was the ever-present 1%s: that when you're doing a task, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, thousands of times in a day - they add up to significant $$ in your business. I learned that I can weed with both hands...at the same time. Woah.  :) Plus, it was demanding enough that by the end of the season, the fact that I still wanted to farm meant that I did, in fact, want to farm.  And I do.  

So I'm going to. :) 

And this year is going to be a great fit for many other reasons.  My new farmer-mentors are really well connected to the local food goings-ons in Iowa, and have already been incredibly supportive of my goal to start this coming year.  They ask really great questions, and always seem open and interested in spurring my thinking into different possibilities for how to start up, what and how to grow, where to sell and all the things I need to be thinking about along the way.  They're also more familiar with this region's pests and growing issues, varieties that have worked better/worse for them, and the hurdles of direct marketing in a less populated/urban area.  Just from my first few weeks here, I also feel like they're pretty much experts on how to do a lot with a little.  Which will be a pretty important factor in my survival in these coming years...

So the season is off to a good start.  I don't know how much I'll be writing these days.  I have more time after work these days, but a lot more to do.  If anyone wants to be on my holy-crap-julia's-starting-a-business advisory team let me know. 

Eek. :)

<3julia

p.s. -> tomato jungle! :)