We Are All Woven Together

Like the antique family quilt we have displayed in our living room, our story has been woven through generations. Each step our ancestors took lead Matt and I right to this moment, to these people, to this time.

The farm is so special, and maybe I am just feeling nostalgic today, but surrounding ourselves with the past, while looking forward to the future is a funny, and sometimes emotional, place to be in. Honoring our past, while forging ahead through innovation can be a tricky thing. Keeping those old traditions and values and faith at the center of our lives while modernizing and integrating and diversifying... sometimes it feels like a tug of war.

The quiet of the morning brings new thoughts. Are we enough? Is the land enough? Do we know enough? And while these are all conscious streams of second guessing, I can feel the generations before us nodding their heads, and pushing us along. Why not here? Why not now? You are enough, the land is enough... It was enough for us and it will be enough for you, but in a different way.

We aren't growing and selling tobacco, our income isn't solely relying on the land... and our children only know the wild and free farm life, not the scary and hard farm life that those before them endured. And I wonder to myself, how is that fair? Yet I feel the past saying, we have worked for this, we have worked for you. Enjoy what we have provided, and make it your own.

I feel them woven through us, in our traditions and faith, in our hobbies and interests, and also when I look at that quilt, or come across an old picture, or take a morning stroll through the dawn light. They are there, and they are reminding us that it's ok to be scared. It's ok to be scared, but do it anyway. See the beauty, see the possibility, and just jump!