This week carries a lot of weight.
The Raffs are heading to Denver to spend time with family, and we’ll be back on Tuesday. Winter seems it might be longer this year. By mid-January, we usually feel a shift—more spring chicken sales, new farm stay bookings, an increase in emails and calls: signs that people are ready to look ahead. That shift hasn’t happened yet, and it leaves us in a lower gear.
It’s impossible to separate that from what’s happening beyond the farm. There’s a lot of tension moving through the country, and a lot of grief. Add in talk of another government shutdown, rising costs, tariffs tightening already thin margins, and a general sense that things feel unstable. There’s anger, yes—but also a quieter fear that many people are carrying without much room to talk about it. We don’t have clean answers. We’re just feeling it, the same way many of you likely are.
But gratitude is a lens. The abundance of goodness really is tied to our ability to see those good things. And we have had goodness this week: Waylon picking calendula flowers for me, sunny days, Wyatt earning his green belt in Tang Soo Do, and Teara asking to stay on with us a while longer. We’re relieved to have a good hand stay on. Continuity matters on a small farm.
Some plans didn’t come together this week. The pig move didn’t happen in the timing we hoped for, and now we need to separate the dad from the piglets after he started getting a little too interested in the young female. Farming has a way of reshuffling priorities fast. The tractor has also started acting up, which puts routine maintenance back on the list—air filters, oil change, the usual.
Funnily enough, Jeremy suggested yesterday that he might consider putting zucchini in the ground next week, since the weather looked so sunny, and insisted we could just keep an eye out for an unlikely frost. Man makes plans, and God laughs. It froze so hard last night that the grass and tops of cars were all frozen white this morning. That may temper our excitement to plant new seeds.
We also met with the county tax assessor regarding a TOT audit for our farm stays, which was ordered last year, immediately following the long-awaited Ag Enterprise Ordinance. The audit was finally completed at the beginning of the year, and we began appealing the $65k in taxes they want to collect. For a long stretch, the county hadn’t issued guidance for farm stays on AG II parcels, yet still expected taxes to be remitted. They acknowledged that our situation is unique and encouraged us to take it to the Board of Supervisors, with the goal of creating clearer, more equitable standards and moving forward with fair discretion. It’s not resolved, but being heard matters, and we were grateful for their compassion and understanding today.
That’s where we are this week. Tired. Grateful. Concerned. Still planting, fixing, separating pigs, and trying to find chickens new homes. The world feels unsettled, and the farm doesn’t exist outside of that.
This Week’s Farm Box
