My name is Bobby. I am a 26-year-old organic vegetable farmer and bread baker in Gordon, Georgia. I graduated from college just down the road in 2009, from Georgia College in Milledgeville, with a degree in Liberal Studies, on my way to get a job or do graduate studies in nonprofits or public policy. After that, I'm not entirely sure what happened. Despite the recession, I got a few perfect job offers in my field but none of them felt right. I just stuck around and worked at a coffee shop with my friends, started baking lots and lots of bread and selling it or giving it away, and started gardening. When Chelsea graduated, we decided to have an adventure and travel the country volunteering on organic farms through the WWOOF program. But, we are really bad at travelling and adventuring, so we ended up staying at the first farm we visited in West Virginia for the rest of the season. I say we are bad at adventuring. Really, we were just lucky. We found the right place at the right time, with the right mentors, and I fell in love with farming.
Have you ever discovered something only to feel like it had been a part of you your entire life? After a short time, you can't imagine yourself without this thing, as if it has always been a part of you? That's how I felt when I discovered farming. I did not grow up in a farming family. My mother's family come from the early suburbs that have since been swallowed up into the city. My dad's family comes from a small rural town, but they were always townies: bankers, shop owners, newspapermen, but not farmers. Somehow, though, here I am. A farmer.
After our apprenticeship in West Virginia, we were homesick and trying to figure out what to do next. We spent a few months researching our options, then moved to North Carolina to get a degree in sustainable agriculture. We had a miserable time there, but we learned a lot about ourselves and farming. Chelsea worked at a goat cheese dairy, and I managed a small produce and cut flower farm. We decided to start looking for land back home in Georgia, and the opportunity of a lifetime fell in our laps. So, in October 2011 we moved into a rundown farmhouse down a half mile dirt road in Gordon, Georgia and started trying to carve a farm out of the brush that rushes in to overtake a piece of land when you turn your back for a decade.
And now we are here. It has been an overwhelmingly difficult year, and I'm sure if you asked Chelsea she would tell you she wouldn't do it all over again. But, we made it. Most of the holes in the roof (and floor) have been patched, fences have been raised, crops have grown and died, families have been fed, that elusive feeling we call "community" has been felt. After hosting all three families (hers, mine, and the landlords) in one place for the first time this Thanksgiving, we went into recovery mode. Nearly two months later, and I am still feeling a bit overwhelmed with it all. But, now it is time to begin again. Days are growing longer, new seeds are arriving, and CSA members are beginning to send in their checks. Now, I'm just trying to muster up the courage to jump in again and hope I remember how to swim.
So, that is who I am. After writing that, I think the purpose of this blog is to remind me the why of it all. I find it far too easy to run through the never ending to-do list without remembering why I chose this particular to-do list in the first place. I am a farmer because I love building and tweaking my perfect system, my perfect world, even if it's only these few acres. I love the feeling of dirt on my hands.
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