Beginnings
The following post was written two years ago as my debut Substack essay. I wrote it before we moved onto the land (but didn’t post it until months later), after a few summers of running our sheep and goats here while living a distance away. It seems fitting to post it again now, as we move off the hill and into the shelter of stone walls and woodlands, after two full years living on and in and with the land, living every breath of wind and turn of the season. Two years spent fully immersed in this land, learning it, living it, becoming it.
This piece was written in response to growing anti-farming, anti-livestock sentiment, and also as an introduction, with the understanding of the land and how to work with it that I had at the time. Reading back through it now… it’s clumsy. It’s disconnected, written with limited perspective from a writing desk in our home twenty-five miles away between daily visits to the land and herd, trying to farm it from a distance. Much has changed. But the message remains: that of our place, our belonging, on the land—despite what those who want us off the land might have us believe—as farmers, herders, gardeners, as custodians and co-creators, as part of our landscape.
I have lightly updated and edited it for readability. Click through to read the full post.
