Day 28 - Wrestling With Our Options

 You don't know what you don’t know. 

Becoming a farm-owning family was not something we had truly envisioned. But when the opportunity presented itself, we dove in headfirst and never looked back. Unfortunately it was the shallow end of the pool and our excitement for this opportunity has caused various headaches and ailments along the way.

Even before we even owned the farm, my wife and I spent many conversations attempting to figure out what to do with it. These discussions about the future of the farm evolved all the time and led to sharing ideas, discussing the pros and cons of those ideas, researching those ideas, and then getting sidetracked by the present day problems and surprises of home ownership. We even went as far as creating a Google Doc spreadsheet detailing our various ideas. Looking back at this document gets me excited even today. While we haven’t gotten started turning many of these ideas into realities, we haven’t ruled them out either. 

Some of the many ideas we discussed were ways to improve the land. We looked into prairie restoration, reforestation, adding trails, and maybe even including a pond somewhere. We looked at animals we might be able to have including chickens, goats, and bees. We investigated adding crops such as pumpkins, fruit trees, herbs, and vegetables. We even researched using the barn for microgreens and mushrooms.  

We also thought deeply about the “big picture” and pondered turning the farm into a destination for the community. Could it be a pizza farm? Maybe a home for nature camps? Could we rent out the barn for storage and/or contract the land out for photographers to use? Could we homebrew and run a farm and nature-themed beer garden?

The ideas were endless. This was both a blessing and a curse. Looking at all these options didn't make things any clearer, but they just muddied the waters. The problem is we are both intrigued and interested in so many things. Everything sounded captivating and we were excited to see where this adventure would take. We wrestled with lots of questions we just were not ready to answer. 

Wrestling might have been the next logical step.