Homestead & Farm
We Didn't Always
Dream of A
Retreat Center
In the beginning our dreams were much simpler, we thought the extent of our impact would be the production of veggies, a small business with a few loyal customers is all we could expect. It wasn’t until we had an opportunity to purchase back the neighboring land, land that used to belong to our family; land we desperately needed to expand our farm production, that our present dream began to form…
…We had quickly used all of our available space and were having to turn down future opportunities. Additionally, without the space, cycles would have to die before we could plant new ones, leaving gaps in our production & offerings, and this could be our answer…
“...The most work our four person team has ever endeavored...”
...The only problem was: land that our family had sold, once upon a time, for next to nothing, was now worth hundreds of thousands of US dollars, and saying yes to an opportunity such as this would require: courage, faith, the hardest work our 4 person team had ever endeavored, and a strategy; because, veggies alone would not pay the mortgage on a number this big. This number was bigger than anything we had ever dreamed of buying, but we believed in our team, and so we began to plan…
We Planned...
...& So
…We took measurements, and calculated down to the seed what we could grow on the new land. I could tell you how many beds, how many yards of compost, and how many heads of lettuce, or other, we could produce and exactly the cost it would take for us to grow them. Once we knew what we could grow, we focused on what it would take to bridge the gap between that and the monthly payments...AND that would require tourism…
...So we had a decision to make… “Are we willing?” ...dreams don’t just come true, you have to first, say “Yes”, and so we sat down as a family because it would take all of us…
“We had a decision to make..."Are we willing" ”
…We planned new ways to utilize the space, and the types of opportunities and services we would offer, and it was there we would find the funds to make this dream work. The conclusion: the workload was big, and we would need help, BUT…we could only afford to bring on help if the 4 of us took no salary for the years it took for us to win back our family’s land, and we would work our butts off in the process…
“We would bring back our ancestral land”
...We Set
Strategy...
A
…We mapped out exactly what we would need to do, the time table we would need to do it in, how challenging it would be, and for how long… and then, together, we said…Yes!...
…we were ready for the fight of our lives: we would bring back our ancestral land; we would have more space to feed more friends and family; and we would have dreamed bigger than we had ever dared to in our lives; we were nervous, but we felt empowered,, and we were together...
We knew that no matter how hard the work might be we would figure it out together, just like we did everyday; we would talk and laugh, sharing these strange moments were the work was so hard all you could do was laugh, but also knowing, somewhere deep down, that someday we would look back and laugh, once more, about the things we put ourselves through when we were younger... we may not have known much else, but "together" was something we could consistently count on...
...An Unhappy
Ending...
…I wish I could say that this part of the story had a happy ending but this is where our vision is contested. Just before solidifying the agreement, the seller went quiet, and unbeknownst to us had made a deal with a group of expats that were willing to pay almost double; an impossible amount for us; and just like that, our dream, as quickly as we were challenged to dream it, was over and morale was low; each of us left with a formless question...How could we un-dream ourselves BIG?…
…In truth it’s easier to stay "small", when you never knew it was considered "small". Our family’s land felt big when we were little, and before: cycles, veggie spacing, and days to maturity, were relevant to us, we thought little about our small piece of the world ever not being enough. But now, faced with: no way to expand; having dared to become entrepreneurs and stand on our own; even more, having been challenge to see ourselves as owners of a project bigger than we had ever before; getting so close that we could almost feel the neighboring dirt between our toes (we do at times work barefoot); and then losing it…it was only “now” that we realized the world, in a way, felt bigger and stronger than us, and it was the moment that our oasis, for the first time felt like: a barrier, the best we could do, smaller than before, and for a moment, I think we all felt a little bit small, and hope was hard to come by…
“How could we un-dream ourselves BIG?...”
“So I began to dream again...
what if?...”
What If...
...A Small
…Somber faces, smiles with more words behind them than honesty, and heavy bodies is what I was faced with as we worked our fields the coming week. The universe had just challenged us to rise but it felt like the world had put us right back in our places…
…The truth was, regardless of possibilities lost, I was proud of us, we rose to something no one would have expected us to; we imagined ourselves bigger than the world had valued us; we said yes to a dream many, in our position, may have backed away from; we said “yes"more than once, and had the courage to walk in it, even if only for a moment, and in universal balance that has to be worth something, even if not what we had originally thought; and so I began to dream again…what if…
…I had little proof, a lot of butterflies, and with a chest full of faith I shared with my family how proud I was of them, how whether they realize it or not, their “ Courageous Yes” moved mountains, for our future; and that someday we would see how. I promised them, on that day, that I would fit all of our big dreams right here, into our little oasis…
What If!?
New Dream...
A
The BIG
No, we couldn’t fit more veggies here, in the traditional field sense, no matter how creative we were, But what if in every corner, or overgrown, underutilized edge of the property we could fit a piece of the dream we had just created! What if… we utilized our tiny bit of mountain, where we couldn’t grow much, or repurposed one of our tilapia ponds… What if we could build a retreat center right here!?… and off I went tape measurer in hand, to just see…WHAT IF…
…I took photos and videos of where I thought we might fit what. Took rough measurements, and climbed up our small bit of mountain; a mountain that connects us to the river but that we seldom summited; a bit of land graced by few other than the cows that ate from it; and I urgently needed to see it again, I needed to know if we could. It was beautiful up there, not much other than rock and bright green grass, where the mountains in this area begin to climb upward; and although not much, and not very big, the butterflies in my stomach dared me to try…
...I returned to my house, at the front of the property, wild with determination and sketched, dreamed, doodled, planned, erased, and erased, and erased, until I came to a conclusion: it would be tight but it would be possible; we can make it fit, everything, every bit of our hope to host interns, and retreats, classes, and more; all of it…right here…and just like that: we CAN'T...became, I think we could...became WE CAN...
...And so we broke ground…
“And so we...”
