Farm Dreams

I know I'm not the only one out there who has always dreamed of living on a farm. In today's fast paced, high technology world the farm dream seems to be the perfect antithesis to our worldly woes. The farm reality is a bit different than the farm dream, of course, but I think that the same qualities that attract me to the farm dream are still part of the farm reality, just mixed in with mud, animal poo and sweat that don't necessarily show themselves in the dream version. Anyway, I've had this farm dream for a long time. As I've lived in cheap apartments as a college student and the suburbs as a newly wed I've held onto that dream. I've grown what I could in window boxes and shady backyards, read books like Living with Pigs and filled our corner of the neighborhood with the clucks of backyard chickens. And all the while I've been saving up pennies and dimes and putting them away in my Farm account. In mid-March we found out that Chris has been assigned to University of Kentucky, Lexington, for his residency. Medicine is much like the military in that they assign you to a hospital for residency and you don't have an choice. You can get the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge and refuse, or you say "yes sir" and you move to Kentucky. So even though we had never even visited Kentucky it is, suddenly, our new home. Thankfully Kentucky is perhaps the best state for living out our farm dream. The more I learn about Kentucky the more it seems to be the ideal place for us. So one week ago we drove to Lexington, met with a realtor, visited 7 small farms for sale and at the end of a very long day we walked through the door of our new home. As soon as we walked into the open kitchen and living space Chris was sold, and as soon as we caught a glimpse of the backyard with 3 acres of fenced in pasture, a big barn and a workshop (i.e. dye studio) I knew I was home.

So now we begin our Kentucky adventure where we are turning our farm dream into reality. We are very lucky that its a dream that we can make happen. I know its not something that everyone can do, especially so early in our lives. Whenever we tell people about our plans the response is either "oh...thats nice" (from the city dwellers who can't imagine living in the country) or "wow I wish we could do that! I don't even know where I would start..." So for those of you who are curious about the process of turning dream into reality I'm going to try to keep my blog up to date as we go through the challenges and joys of this new adventure!