30 Trips Around the Sun

In an effort to bring some clarity to this tale, I will introduce myself. My name is Morganne and today is my 30th Birthday. I used to craft celebrations filled with friends and cocktails and farm to table food in order to commemorate my special entrance into the world, but lately the experience is replicated in a much quieter and child-friendly fashion. Today, I made an apple cake with homemade apple sauce. Just like my grandma Ginny used to make. I snuck a piece when the house got quiet enough to really taste it. It’s tasted pretty delicious if you ask me.

On my 30th birthday I can’t help but be honest about the feelings of being lost that I have. I started growing things in the spring of 2020 to help our family’s syrup company to supply its seasonal flavors with produce needed and under supplied due to COVID. My whole life changed because of COVID. As a gym owner, this pandemic devastated my incredibly successful business. I was content at 28, making a living for myself and my family when all of a sudden, the world turned upside down. People paid for lessons for weeks. They needed to be refunded. Then my business had nothing to run off of. Then I couldn’t pay my staff. Then I couldn’t have my business. Reality was throwing me jabs to the chin and I was flustered. Then when I was hit by the physical limitations of a challenging pregnancy and a rare nerve disorder, I began to think all was lost.

So I grew things. Outside, in the dirt. I could sit and move my arms. That was enough. I didn’t think it would work, most of the time. But it did. I had the time to watch things grow, and luckily that was what I needed too.

Maybe it’s time to stop thinking of things in terms of progress but more so in terms of practice. Rewards come to those who practice often and with patience and presence. After 2 years of the deepest inhale we could all take, this January brings an exhale of relief. The sigh we were all waiting for. That sigh comes in the form of planning and preparation here on the farm. While the snow creates a barrier to protect and insulate the life starting to form below, we hide in our homes preparing for spring to do the same.

“They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.”