As I was preparing to write this monumental blog post, I toyed with different titles. The one above came to me just now and I realized there could be no other. It is a line from a song that was popular when I was in high school, "Closing Time" by SemiSonic. The context of the song is completely unrelated to our lives here, but the line itself is universally true.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

And so, Andrew and my time at Foxwood Farm has ended. Our beginning, just a scant two years ago, has taught us more than any university or master's program could have hoped. With the grace of God, we have built a thriving business out of nothing. We have expanded our family from three to (going on) five. And we have met so many wonderful people both in person and online; blessings beyond comprehension; life lessons, horrible mistakes, amazing accomplishments and satisfying evenings of exhaustion.

This blog will be in two parts: What happens to us? and What happens to the farm? Let's start with us.

As you well know, we have been working with my parents to come to a smooth transition for ownership of this land. We were up against a lot of hurdles as we had no equity, no savings and some college debt. My parents graciously worked with us as we transitioned from an outside income to direct consumer sales. Still, with fresh milk being outlawed like cocaine, we found that our sales reached a certain level and plateaued (as we could not advertise). We could not get past a certain income level and therefore, our plans of ramping up our rental payments to my folks were in a holding pattern.

Time grew long and patience grew thin. We began exploring options with financing a loan and land contracts but kept returning to the fact that our income stream would not support those plans without supplemental income (read: Off-farm job). With the workload mainly on Andy, and the childrearing mostly on me, loans and other jobs didn't seem very possible.

Four weeks ago, we sent out a sort of SOS email to a select group of friends with varying backgrounds who would be able to offer wisdom and advice. We felt most certainly the farm slipping from our hands and needed to make some proactive decisions. Both families deserved some closure, and soon. There were several viable suggestions that came back to us and we began researching all of them.

A few days later our friend Brian from across the state mentioned in a voicemail that he knew of a farmer looking for a young family to take over his gardens on his farm. We were unsure what this offer meant, so we asked for more details. It turns out this farmer (Vince) was a part of our fresh milk producers group, and we had briefly met him at the Eau Claire hearings in March. He runs a certified organic farm with two farms under the name. One runs grassfed beef and organic hogs. The other runs an organic dairy and pastured poultry. The farms are about two miles from each other, and, while Vince owns it all, the dairy is run by a young couple out of UW-Madison. Across the street from the dairy is a small home and about 50 acres of certified organic crop land. This is where the gardens would be.

You see, Vince has a dream for a completely sustainable farmstead. All they are lacking is a large scale market garden, and the family he wanted to bring on would take care of building that market. Well, we had to go check this out. We saw it was a three hour drive, coordinated to have childcare and took off. We actually got a hold of Vince about an hour into the drive where we asked if we could come see his operation. He laughed and said yes. When we arrived, we got to know Vince and his background, see the farms and meet the other people who lived and worked there. We then shared our story and our visions for Foxwood Farm. He had many of the same goals that we have here. In fact, many of them are already in place and working profitably at Vince's farm. They sell everything direct and work with a food co-op in La Crosse to market the grassfed beef. We also learned that the responsibility of the "gardener family" would be to market and expand the farm and bring in new sales.

For those of you that know us and know Andy, this was right up our alley. We agreed to give Vince our resumes, a business plan for the gardens, and a marketing portfolio. In the meantime, I directed him to our website and blog, which he quickly dove into. We left that night in awe and wonder at the possibilities.

This farm would not only pay us a salary, but if we were the right fit, allow us to become part-owners and build up equity in the farm itself. Seriously, we were looking for the catch, the rub. I mean, it was like a gift from God himself.

That was Thursday, the 8th of July. The following week we spent getting our stuff together in a nice portfolio presentation. On Friday, July 16th, Vince and Kristin came to our farm to see what we were doing here. Kristin helps run the dairy with her husband. We had a nice lunch and farm tour, and we went over the portfolio. We felt like we had made a good impression the first time, and this solidified it. The kids even responded really well to them! When they left, we knew the next time we heard from Vince would be the decision. There were three other families that we knew of who were interested in the same position. Who wouldn't be?

It wasn't long. Tuesday the 20th, the email came in.

We had gotten the job!

And suddenly, in the course of a week and a half, our entire lives had changed. In such a short amount of time, we were heading a direction we couldn't have even fathomed beforehand. It was mind-boggling and overwhelming and exciting and daunting all at once.

And we have a start date of September 1st, this year! There is much to be done in a scant month. But we feel confident we can wrap things up in a timely and efficient manner.

We are leaving home, only to make a new one. The goals of Vince's farm are right in line with ours. It's uncanny; we feel as though our plans for Foxwood are simply being transferred to another location in the state.

Here is our new home: St. Brigid's Meadows 

Check it out. Take some time to peruse what they do and offer. We will be taking over that website, and I will be taking over their blog.

So, our time with you is not ended. We are still here, just not in the same place. We look forward to sending our newsletters with the St. Brigid's Meadows logo as the header. We relish the idea of customer relations with new folks, as well as keeping up with you.

And we don't regret anything about our past three years here. The three years at Foxwood caused us to be qualified enough to leave. Without those years of intense learning, we would never have been able to take this position. Without the strife of familial transactions, we never would have considered leaving. To be sure, both our parents are very supportive of this decision.

* * * * *

And now you wonder, what happens to Foxwood Farm here in Omro, WI? What happens to the animals, the gardens, the products? Many people have come to depend on the food here.

We don't intend to leave them out in the cold. We are working on an effective exit strategy with my parents. And that brings us to part two: What happens to the Farm?

I will post on that soon. In the mean time, take care and God Bless you all. He is capable of so many things, beyond our scope of understanding. We are in awe of his greatness this day.

Becky, Andy, Elly, Ethan and ??

Canton is a quaint little town with around nine thousand people. It has that country feel to it with small farms all around us and the Farmington River about a 1/4 mile away with many trout management areas. The pheasant and small game hunting is good here, and the deer and turkey are abundant. The school system is one of the best in the state, and there are good people here who have been here all of their lives and whose families have been here for generations. Now, being that this is still Connecticut, there are the “yuppie” types who commute to the Hartford area every day and live in those expensive cookie cutter homes that all look alike up on the hill that used to be woods and mountains. But they are all in one area of town, so the town still holds most of its original country landscape and charm. (Now, I’m not being derogatory towards the “newer” people of town, but we all know that a lot of small town governments now allow those neighborhoods. You know those neighborhoods. The ones with the people who have those great paying jobs, beautiful homes and SUVs. The ones who live to keep up with the Jones’. They have 2.3 children who play soccer and they hire people to mow their lawns and put up their Christmas decorations.  Ah yes, tax base, tax base, tax base... )

Our home is beautiful. We are on an acre of land with about twenty acres of open space bordering our property out back. We clown around telling each other and everyone else that we have twenty one acres! The house is a two family, surprise, surprise. Tami and I have a four bedroom cape with an attached four bedroom cape/colonial next door. That’s where my sister, brother in law, mom and the kids live. There is a four-car garage that we call “The Barn.” We call it the barn because the tax office has it listed as a barn, and it’s valued at a whole lot less that way. I’m good with that. There is a dirt road that runs along our place and ends about a mile away at the firehouse. We ride our ATVs on it all the time.

Our lives have changed a lot since coming here. Tami is teaching in a town about fifteen minutes away with a smaller population than Canton. She teaches special education students in middle school. Special ed has been her specialty her whole career. While that vocation has its share of problems, she really prefers small town problems as opposed to the ones of the cities. With fewer students, she gets to be more involved with them. I’m more comfortable with her teaching in a small town rather than a big city. Now, I don’t worry about her going to work everyday. She has also gotten very involved at church. She is the chairperson for the women’s group there and runs the food for the hungry collection.

Our daughter Amanda was here with us for a year and a half then decided to join the Navy. She didn’t enjoy or grasp the college life and decided the Navy was her future. We think she made a wise decision. She is recently married now to a guy who is also in the navy. He is on a sub and she is stateside. They have given Tami and I a beautiful granddaughter, and now another one is on the way. We miss them very much. They live in Norfolk, Virginia, where they are both stationed. He’s from Nebraska and likes the idea of farming. I was trying to get him to come up here to our sub-base so maybe we could do some farming together, but our daughter didn’t like that idea. I’m now keeping quiet about it. Oh well, I tried.

Our son Michael has made some friends here. He was resentful of the move at first. He missed his friends very much, and we couldn’t get him involved in the area. He preferred hanging out with his old friends at the beach, playing pool and videos at the many game rooms in the area and going to the mall to meet up with the girls. That was much more exciting to him than muddin' up dirt roads with pickup trucks and going to bon fires on Friday nights at the state forest with the boys around here. He did eventually start making some friends here the last eight months or so, but none of it matters anymore anyway. He has just decided to go to school in Florida. He is going to motorcycle mechanic school in March. He wants to own a Harley Davidson repair shop. I’m very excited for him!

My mother couldn’t be happier living next door with my sister, and her now three children and husband. She is busy with them every day. She cleans and does the laundry and most of the cooking. She has two Golden Retrievers and a Pug. She breeds the two Goldens and we are awaiting the new set of puppies in about three days. This will be the original Golden’s second litter. Mom is going to let her rest now and breed the other Golden from the first set of pups.

My sister is active with the kids and teaches Sunday school. She misses the city life a little bit, but says she likes our new life better and wouldn’t want to raise the kids anywhere else. My brother-in-law has a full time job driving a truck all over the state for a produce company. He loves his job and takes all of the overtime he can get. (It isn’t easy raising three kids today financially, especially here in Connecticut. Contrary to popular belief, we are all not rich in Connecticut.)