Looking Ahead

 
Many people have asked me what I plan to do after I'm finished at the Farm School.  The fact is that I have no idea, and yet I have lots of ideas!  My fellow classmates are all over the map... some have very firm ideas about what's next for them...homesteading, diversified crop production, CSA, college.  Others, like me, are in the process of exploring the seemingly endless ways that you can farm or incorporate this education into your work and personal life.  Will I return to medicine?  I'm tabling that internal debate for now.

I have always been the gal with a plan...I like to know what's next for me.  This time around, however, that's not the case and I'm trying very hard to be at peace with uncertainty.  Being here is like being a kid in a candy store; everywhere I turn there's something new and exciting to learn, and when I look at the upcoming curriculum, it just keeps getting better.

Which poses interesting challenges for me: to be okay with the unknown, to let the path unfold before me, to live in the moment, to trust the process, to throw myself into the learning without getting anxious about the future.

Several years ago, I was sitting in a professional conference that I wasn't enjoying very much. My mind started to wander...big time...and I began fantasizing about what I really wanted to do when I grew up.  I spent hours designing my dream business: a green education center, which would include an organic farm, a classroom space for cooking and wellness classes, and a retail market space.  All of this would operate on a sliding scale model designed to include all comers.  I even started drawing up crude architectural plans for the buildings and fields.  But wait...oops!  No farming or business experience. At all. Last winter, as I was rehashing this whole fantasy for the umpteenth time, a friend told me, "Hmm...you should check out the Farm School."  Oh Universe, I love you.

Speaking of business.  In December, we started a series of business planning classes with Ray Belanger of Fish Park Consulting, which turned out to be a pivotal time for me.  The initial class took me from feeling like la la la farming is fun to wow, I could actually do this.  Ray's take-home message?  With a good well thought-out business plan, you can go from an 80% chance of failure to an 80% chance of success.  I'm not sure how he's come up with those percentages, but he seems to know what he's doing.  I never thought I'd be interested in business; the difference now is that it's taken on a whole new level of relevance.

PS: I have a brand new camera! The Coolpix S3100!