Autumn 2018, a full year had finally passed since adopting my Jersey cow, and in that time the farm was continuing to take on new life. Meg had her goats, turkeys, and a few chickens. Maggie and Ashley were still living down the road, and their cows Cream Cheese and Daisy were in residence in the Balla Machree Farm former dairy barn. Meg had taken over ownership of the two Black Angus calves, and they were on site sharing a stall with Pip until her new calf made its debut sometime in March. I had my hands full, no doubt, but I felt that our farm needed focus and direction. I was spending an enormous amount of time jumping from shoveling, to milking Pip, to weed whacking and setting fence lines, to lugging water buckets, all for the likes of a very small collection of animals. I had assumed a farming role on a site that was once a thriving dairy operation with upwards of 50 milking cows. While I was certain that I did not want to resuscitate something of that magnitude, I still didn’t know what my new farm should be.

At this point in my farming narrative, it seems like the appropriate point to go back a few years to establish a bit of context as to how I ended up here - a middle aged wife of a lawyer, who just spent the last 20+ years living in Boston raising three kids, now contemplating the next chapter that, for better or for worse, was going to involve agriculture and raising farm animals in Vermont.

In the summer of 1996, a few months after we had our first of three children, and just before Matt embarked upon his career as a litigation associate in the Boston office of a large global law firm, I commenced my two-decades long career as Chief Executive of Domestic Affairs, i.e. stay-at-home-mom, or as it has in the past been ingloriously referenced, housewife. Apropos of the stereotypes, this role coincided with the acquisition of our three-bedroom, one and a half bath, one car garage colonial home nestled on ¼ acre in quintessential metro-Boston suburbia.

For seven years, among countless other home and child-centered tasks, I pushed a stroller while walking the dog, dug trenches in the playground sandbox with Tonka trucks, supervised a posse of neighborhood kids riding tricycles and scooters in our driveway, and baked cookies for the Parent Teacher Organization meetings at our elementary school. As the old adage goes… “woman’s work is never done,” and I was living that reality. However, my husband was not living the “Man works till set of sun” part of that proverb. The sun rose and set over Matt’s job. He was never home in time for dinner, and the kids were lucky to lay eyes on him in the mornings before he backed out the driveway heading for another day’s grind in the office.

The suburban gig was wearing on me. In the summertime, instead of running through the pasture dodging cow pies on the way to meet up with cousins for a swim in the pond, my three kids were clicked into car seats for a drive to the local swimming pool that we paid a fortune to join, only to have to return home shortly after arriving because some other kid’s diaper exploded and cranked up the bacteria so high that everyone had to clear out for hours until the PH settled from the requisite toxic shock of chlorine. Back home, in our fenced backyard, the blow-up baby pool would entertain for a mere portion of the afternoon until we all were so hot and grumpy that we retreated inside to air conditioning and Nickelodeon TV. Instead of re-creating for my kids the endless freedom of summer that I had on my family’s farm, I gifted them the opportunity to indulge in yet another episode of Spongebob Squarepants.

In 2003, when our three kids were two, four and seven, Matt had a professional breakthrough and was promoted to Partner at the law firm. While this did not coincide with any less time spent at the office, the prospects of a generous salary bump finally opened the discussion for purchasing from my family a 10-acre site on the farm and commencing the construction of our “someday” forever home.

*Springtime weekend in Vermont. Adventures with salamanders!*

A year later, our newly built Vermont house became our summertime sanctuary and weekend family getaway. But just as I was starting to conceptualize indulging my alter ego, farmer mom, life with children entered a new dimension of busy. The days of plunking around in the brook, sledding down the driveway, exploring the woods around the house, and stuffed animal make-believe adventures abruptly segued to three kids playing on three different sets of sports teams and three different groups of friends arranging three different sets of social activities. I was a taxi driver - drop off, pick up and repeat. Any possibility of indulging farming fantasies was stuffed away to “maybe someday.” Until we lived in Vermont full time, other than planting a tomato or two in the summertime, there was no possibility of dabbling in any kind of agricultural endeavor. Nonetheless, I thought about it a lot!

Having grown up on a dairy farm, I always envisioned cows one day back on the property. However, I knew the learning curve, workload, and financial investment for getting a dairy operation up and running again made it out of the question. Nonetheless, I loved the idea of cows, so I turned my attention and expended countless hours while the kids were at school reading and researching anything I could get my hands on about raising grass-fed beef. Ultimately, I fell in love with the idea of red-coated heritage Devon cattle, picturing them peacefully grazing our slopes.

Fast forward to January 2016… kids are in college and boarding school; Matt switches professional gears and takes a job as an in-house litigation leader with a Russian company based in Amsterdam, Netherlands; and I am at a crossroads. The ex-pat life didn’t feel right for me. Matt continued to have very long workdays, and the kids were all off at school. I made my solo tours through all the spectacular Amsterdam museums, but I couldn’t quiet the unsettled pangs beckoning me to launch whatever it was I was going to do. Matt had started a new professional chapter, our three kids were deeply ensconced in high school and college, and I was a tourist. Then I turned 50. It was now or never! The farming profession has a distinct termination point when the human condition simply cannot withstand the physical demands. With a starting point well into middle age, that end date was already visible in the horizon. With Matt’s support, my visits to Amsterdam became less frequent (he came home more), and our farming story began.

After a year managing one dairy cow along with her various barn mates, I realized that I simply wasn’t equipped. Cows eat a lot and then they shit, and shit, and shit. Each shovelful weighed more than twenty pounds, heavier than hoisting two full gallons of milk! I knew the idyllic summertime image of shiny chestnut brown Devons meandering our hillsides would translate to a cluster of misery come winter, each animal standing in ankle deep muck with dried globs of it plastering every backside. The illusion of running a grass-fed beef operation became a disillusion.

With Meg still in residence down the road and willing to step in to manage chores, I was able to sneak away to visit with Matt, who at this point had been living and working in Amsterdam for the better part of three years. This visit happened to correspond with my birthday (September 21), and Matt had arranged for us to indulge in a long weekend exploring the northernmost region of the Scottish Highlands. Following two flights, the final leg of our journey necessitated a two-and-a-half-hour nail biting drive with Matt at the helm of our right-steering rental car navigating narrow coastal roads. Matt’s tolerance with his co-pilot was challenged as I gasped at every bend and clenched my teeth in horror, anticipating with certainty a head-on collision with every approaching truck. Thankfully the journey concluded without a scrap or scrape, and we finally crossed into the small seacoast village of Wick where we would spend three nights at the Ackergill Tower Hotel, a newly restored early 16th century castle.

Upon entering the drive, the castle was set off in the distance with waves from the North Atlantic crashing along the cliffs below. The visual was breathtaking, like we were entering into a time warp from the 1500s or maybe driving onto the set from an episode of Outlander. Stonewalls lined the drive on both sides, borders to vast expanses of pure green pastures nibbled upon by dozens of sheep. I knew at that moment what my farm should be.

Balla Machree Lamb begins

Stick season