What is this newsletter? (An Intro)
Food, sustainability, being a full-time travelling family on wheels, and starting a new chapter.
I have been mulling over for months how to re-invent this newsletter, and it is finally time to wipe the digital dust from it and start again. To begin, some of you have been wondering: what happened to you guys? Where are you? What have you been doing for the last 2 years? And our most popular question I receive by email: are you going to open back up?
Very short summary: we lost our farm (an organic CSA farm and market business) at our rental property about two years ago, when we made the painful decision to leave, due to what we felt was a very unsustainable rental agreement and situation. After the heartbreak of losing our farm (and all of our savings that we were made to invest into the property/buildings), we took almost all we had and bought a cheap, old, run-down 1993 airstream RV bus, and, with the help of some friends, retrofitted it to make it into an off-grid tiny home (with a composting toilet and solar panels) and hit the road. We travelled to see family and friends, work on farms for brief stints to earn money, or WWOOF on farms (volunteer in exchange for parking and food), and stay in a few state parks when we could afford it. We have done lots of things on our trip, including on-farm butchering of livestock, milking and making sheep’s milk cheese, staying and working at an ecovillage, working at a prepper intentional community, parking our bus and sleeping in some beautiful areas, parking and sleeping in some very questionable ones where we were scared we might get robbed or killed, breaking down a lot on the sides of highways, including mountain highways (fun!), lots of hiking and lots of hot springs, lots of swimming in swimming holes, once getting lost in a maze of massive rocks in the desert, once getting stung by a nest of wild bees in the mountains, and having a few campfires and ghost stories and s’mores.
Some of it has been fun! (More stories later). Some of it has not. (See above. Catch that wild bees part?). What has been hardest was that we realized early on that the trauma we felt from losing our farm affected us deeply, and in different ways. Losing so much money to the property sent us on an emotional downward spiral that has been difficult to climb out of. We also felt like we left a wonderful community of friends and customers, and it hit us hard. Alex spent most of these two years wondering if he even ever wanted to farm for our own business anymore, and maybe farm at all. We both really worried about our two sons, ages 11 and 9 now, and how we could give them a stable environment again.
We had some real disagreements on our next step. It took a while (like, over a year and half!) but we finally are on the same page, and are looking to farm somewhere we can truly be at, stay at, and perhaps one day pass on to our kids.
This past season, we were at a wonderful organic fruit and vegetable farm in upstate New York where Alex was invited to be farm production manager. We thought of perhaps permanently staying in this area, but there is nowhere in the area we can really afford at this time, with the current housing crisis looming, and especially in the lower Hudson Valley. We left that farm this winter after the season was over. We decided to visit the Midwest to look into what opportunities we could find out there, and have a good possibility for moving out there now. (But more on that later!). We have been in Texas for this past month, visiting family and camping out, and are currently in southern New Mexico. We are still living in our bus for the time being. I am still homeschooling for the time being, and we start working at another short-term farm job down here starting this week, while we wait to come back up north.
This past season in New York was both great (learning so much about organic fruit, farming in the mountains) and hard (not having a farm or home anymore, and not being able to afford a home in the Hudson Valley, even to rent). Because I was feeling like I might wither and die from feeling so empty and sad at times, and feeling blue and guilty about our kids living in our bus much longer than expected, I decided to take some of our earnings and go back to school. I am currently getting my double certificate in advanced permaculture in a year-long program, and also recently graduated this winter from the Academy of Culinary Nutrition, receiving my certification in their holistic nutrition and cooking program. I loved teaching farm and food education at our farm, and miss it, and intend to continue doing it. These certifications will only deepen my knowledge that I can share.
This newsletter is also going to discuss our plans whenever we know them, and also what we have been doing. Living in our bus has made us all feel part adventurous, free-spirited hippie family, and part homeless one who haven’t been able to afford a real home yet. It has been an interesting ride. Some things have been difficult for me to deal with (I would love to give these boys more space, for instance—after two years, a bedroom would be nice!). The boys like it when we travel to another place/farm, but it has also been hard on them (and us) when we leave a farm, as we all get attached. Working on other farms has also made us all miss our old farm terribly, and our old farm family life. I therefore often have felt desperate to find a place to settle, but desperation is never a good place to start from, so I have spent a lot of time trying my best to be patient.
This newsletter will be part essay, part education, part memoir.
This will, above all, be a work in progress. I may talk about living in an off-grid tiny home on wheels, I might discuss homeschooling, and I will definitely talk about food, healing and farming. I will also discuss where we have been travelling, maybe the best food truck we have been to in a certain town, or the food history of a certain area. Nothing is off-limits, and I’m excited to see where the Radical Kitchen goes!
And for those reading this who wrote to ask when we are opening back up or starting our CSA again, thanks so much for writing us. I had gotten so many emails about our farm, so many that I became overwhelmed and on the verge of a nervous breakdown and couldn’t answer any of them. If you wrote me one of those emails: I am sorry I did not write back! I wish I had news that was more concrete, but for now, we are still in flux until things begin to solidify. Thank you all for caring, and for all of your support!
But for those of you still here (and still reading this!), I promise for this newsletter to be educational, and mostly fun, and I will try not to write about depressing things, though personally I have dealt with some depression these past two years, and also the state of farming, our planet’s health and the food world is not always the sunniest place. But I remain steadfast that it is important to be informed all the same. I have also seen some real rays of hope in the world, and it has strengthened my overall mood, too!
Thanks to everyone who has reached out, or thought of us, or supported us at our farm, and want to continue supporting us. Your kindness really helped get us through some dark times, especially that last season at our farm when we felt like our lives were falling apart, and I literally cried every night for a whole summer. So, again, THANK YOU!
How often does this newsletter go out?
This free newsletter will go out every Monday morning. Eventually, I will add the paid portion of the newsletter. Paid subscribers will get a newly-crafted recipe by me, plus extra content, every Thursday. My culinary nutrition program focused a lot on recipe development, especially of therapeutic and healing diets, and I have a lot of recipes I have been working on that I would like to share! This paid version will launch in late March.
Paid subscribers will also be contributing to supporting our future farming efforts, so thank you! As we are saving up to start again, or farm in some capacity, your support helps an independent food writer/farmer and her farming family get off the ground (and into the ground)!.
Whether you are a free or paid subscriber, thank you to everyone who subscribed to the newsletter! Hope you all like the Radical Kitchen and its future issues. I’m looking forward to working on it!
Alison
Thank you for sharing your stories, Alison. You are, as always, a wonderful writer. You and your family have been through so much in the past few years, and turning towards your ancestors and the landscape in which they fed their neighbors is extra meaningful right now. I am honored have the opportunity to read your newsletter. XO
You do not know me: I have been a friend of Alex's father, Bruce, since we were both at Wellesley High School in the l950s. Over time, both Helen and he have discussed your farm work, your travails, and your travels. So, as you write well (and I taught writing at the high school level for four decades), and because I know Bruce and Helen, and knew your husband when he was a lad, I am interested. (This is just the ol' teacher in me, but I assume many have told you of the typo in the post: fourth line below the photo of your tiny kitchen. I assume you want this to edited out, as I said, because you write so well....)