Primer

As much as I hate catch-up posts, I feel there are some explanations I owe and details about the time that has passed required for anything to make sense from here on out. So, a short primer on the Rural World.

• Our main business now is.......chicken! This was something of a dream of Nick's for a few years but came to fruition within the past two years. We have been running pastured chickens Joel Salatin-Style, which means chickens live in coops that move onto fresh pasture every day, and in addition to their feed they get to eat grass, bugs, flowers, etc. 

• But we still have the sheep. We even have the hard-fought Australians, plus a few more that came two years later. Our wool is much improved with the addition of those animals, and the lamb is tasty as ever. Overall, though, the ovine side of business is a lot more low-key than the avian side. 

• We opened a STORE late last year. So much for my "Never going to work retail again!!!!!" promise. 

• We're building a straw bale house for our main residence (on the farm). This has been only 8 years in the making. It's actually quite close to being done, the windows having been ordered today and roof currently being tar-papered. 

•  I somehow never mentioned that we bought a condo in Cleveland in 2011. One of the bright sides to the real estate market crash was that we got to build a little nest back home! The last couple of years since Liam came into our life, he and I have spent a month or so each summer there so he can discover his American roots. 

The truth is that you probably already know all this. But if there is something that seems incongruous or doesn't make sense, don't hesitate to ask. 

The darkness

"Art comes from joy and pain... but mostly from pain." -Edvard Munch

I find this to be true whether the art form is musical, visual, or -- in my case -- written. And so, from the darkest I've felt in our time in Chile, I resurrect por fin my long neglected blog.

I write from a place of loneliness, this an attempt perhaps to connect in a way that I haven't been successful at in my adopted country. It has been difficult to put delicately in words exactly what is driving me right now without sounding like I'm complaining-- I'm not aiming to blame anyone or anything, but the truth is that our lifestyle is deeply unstable and makes it extremely difficult to sustain connections with anyone or any place. A great deal of this is owing to the geography of Chile: because everything has to happen in Santiago and our home is not in Santiago, it requires frequent trips into town. Because getting anything done is an exhausting and tedious task, trips tend to be overnight or longer. And because these trips happen with relative frequency, we generally don't sleep in the same house for longer than a week at a time.

In an attempt for greater stability, I've tried minimizing my trips into Santiago but that has led to the isolation which I now am currently facing. Wake up, become slave to three-year-old, wave hello to the husband who passes through between work and bed, sleep, repeat. Business has been incredibly stressful. Imposing a 180 degree change on an industry is no small task, not even counting the whole doing-business-in-a-foreign-culture thing. Nick and I both have found it difficult at many times to understand why business works the way it does here and to stick with our guns in insisting we want things done our way. Being in charge and being change is isolating itself.

So, dear reader, I reach out to you. Let me connect, let me show you, let me hear you.

Let's pretend like nothing's happened, ok?

Something I hate is "I'm back" posts on blogs. So let's skip it. A quick summary since my last post:

I had a baby. He'll be four next week.

Part of our house burned down.

One of our most beloved employees died.

Ata's house was sold and she passed away.

We created an amaaaaaaaazing tasting chicken.

A barn exploded and burned down.


One of those is not like the other, but still we persist.