a new start

Hey.
 It's been a long time. Too long actually. But life has a way of happening at a fast rate of speed!
So here I sit with so much to say, so let me back up a small bit and fill you in. Grab a cup o joe and maybe some chocolate chip cookies. I'll wait. Maybe I'll get some myself....

Let me back up a little, and fill in some blanks I have left out over the years.
We have been building our farm since 2010 when we bought our first cow, Maggie.  Over the years we grew from that one cow to 12, (we raised some, bought some, and were given one).
We had wanted a place of our own for a while...and so begins the story of where we are now...

We wrote up a business plan that is 32 pages long and took 2 months to write, and got the finances in order. Then we went about getting a milk contract with Organic Valley. Getting a milk contract was easy.  We thought we could be milking by Oct. 1, of 2015, easy.
We had no idea how hard it was going to be finding a farm...
So the looking began, and as I would find some places I would email the them to my husband for him to look at. We wanted to stay in the area we were living in due to family, friends and church. If you've ever looked to move you know how time consuming it can be. Am I right or was it just me? Maybe it was due to the amount of land we needed to actually farm or the location, or the timing. Farm land is hard to come by where we live.
We kept our circle of towns rather small. The amount of land high and the price had to be right. I will say I looked at everything in every price range. There were some beautiful places that were for sale. I would giggle and show my husband a beautiful farm and say "Don't look at the price, just look at the front door." Do you know that commercial? It was a Zillow one. That was always fun. Until it wasn't fun anymore. I looked and looked. We drove by some places. We kept looking. Farm after farm. It was not to be. Every place we looked at was a hard no. Why?
Well mostly due to the barns, or lack of one. Barns roofs falling in, cement work is ruined due to the hard Maine winters,with no cows in them, settling of walls with no cement, the types of barns where the manure is under the cows in the "basement", which hasn't been allowed per Maine law since the 50's. Or the barn was so bad off and not what we needed was we would have to bulldoze it under and rebuild. Yikes! Our Realtor was great. She would send us some farms  and we would look them over and go see the ones we thought were something we could make work.
We wrote letters to some farms that were no longer being farmed and asked if they were interested in renting or selling us their farm with all our contact information. We got one letter back saying they were not interested at the time, but wished us well in our pursuit of looking. We thought that was nice.
Well, Oct 1, 2015 came and went. No farm. But we still had our contract. And Organic Valley would prove to be something really good to us and for us.
In the mean time we kept on living our daily lives, farming, home school, cooking, cleaning, working, you know the usual. Still looking. Still praying.
Then it hit us one day, why not send another email to the man who lived in the next town over. He had a beautiful farm, and he had said that he wasn't interested in selling, but he was getting older and tired. So why not? So we did. He emailed us back and wanted to meet us! Oh can you even?! We thought! This was late winter 2016.
We piled the kiddos in the van and went to meet him, and see the farm. We talked, and he showed us the barn and the land and the house. We got on well. Things were looking good. We met his nephew who he farmed with. He liked us too. We liked them all. He even said he'd be willing to make the house bigger and update it to better suit our family of 6! We never asked, or said anything about the size of the house. Living in small spaces is what we were used to. This was all happening so fast. We left later that day with our heads spinning and so joyful. He was going to work up a contract/lease agreement for 3 years with the  reassessment at the end of that time about the possibility of buying the farm. We had the potential of milking cows by the end of May!
Of course we had to call our families and tell them the good news!
Then to top it all off we got a call from a local farmer friend who had found some local certified organic cows that would be calving in late spring. All the certified cows we were looking for were way out towards Michigan. Things were falling into place.
Matthew went with Simon to see the cows the next day. The man who had them wanted them gone and was selling them the following day if we didn't buy them first. We bought 10. Not the beautiful Jerseys that we wanted (yes we love the Jersey breed), but Holstein/Jersey cross, and Belted Galloway Cross. But none the less certified organic and going to be milking! Simon told us we could keep the cows at his farm for a while if the organic papers were a little long in coming before we could get them to their new home. If you don't know organics here is a little FYI, you can't move a certified organic cow to land that is not certified or they loose their certification. The land was certifiable, but it takes a little while for all the paper work to go through the offices. Make sense?
We called Organic Valley and told them the good news, and were working on a start pick up date with them. They were waiting for the call.
Well the weekend came to sign the rental papers! We excitedly piled into the van again, and went with the papers we needed them to sign. This was it! We got to the house and the man had us sit at the kitchen table, and had the kids watching a movie in the next room, his nephew was there as well. He had no papers. We looked at him waiting. He sat down and looked at us and looked down at his hands that were clasped together on the table. I remember my heart was pounding in my ears, and my hands were clasped together in my lap as I was looking at him. I was sitting next to Matthew. I looked at his wife and his nephew, and at him again. He looked at us and said something like...
"I don't know how to tell you other then to just say it." He paused. "I'm sorry, but I just can't rent you the farm. There are family members who are not wanting to share this land, and who want to keep it. And I already promised my nephew that he has first rights to it, and he's not wanting to rent or sell."
My heart sank. I was shocked. Matthew was shocked. He cleared his throat and shook his hands and said something like
"OK. I understand, and can appreciate your honesty. Thank you." Somehow all walked out of the house and piled back into the van.
The kids had no idea what had happened as he told them. Some cried. I felt numb. And confused. And totally disappointed. Then Matthew and I looked at each other and he smiled at me and said
"Well there. Good. It's not where God wants us. I'm disappointed, but I'm ok with this. He has something better in mind."
My world felt so much better hearing him say that to me. I think the kids did too because soon they were chatting about something as we were driving down the road to tell Simon what happened because 10 of our cows were headed to his house.