Don’t Mind us over here with a little.. Mic drop..
In case you missed the subtle hint of sarcasm there…
If anyone thought we went slightly off the deep end last summer, just wait until I tell you what we (very unintentionally) got ourselves into this summer…
I love the summer months, I always have. I love the heat against my skin and as time goes on and my health continues to improve (December my new kidney turns FOUR!) I love feeling how much stronger I am than the year before. Nick and I welcomed Spring and early Summer with farmers markets, taking on new clients, broadening our skill set and preparing for what we thought was going to be the summer that our beautiful leafy dream soared to new heights, and in many ways it really did, just not exactly the way we thought it was going to.
I am a firm believer that life really is all about balance, nothing worth while comes without our willingness to fight for it and nothing bad comes without some kind of silver lining, even when we may have to fight through the haze of life and stress to see it. This summer has been something I have been searching for the words to keep one of my very first promises when we started this: to share our full story. The good, the bad, and the really ugly. The problem I was having was sharing it correctly.
This summer has been nothing more or less than that. We met challenges that we could have gone without, learned lessons that I think we both would have preferred to learn in any other manner than which we did and basically watched our lives go from bad, to worse, to ugly within a two to three short weeks time. There were plenty of days that I thought our dream was over, crushed by an unfortunate series of events that just kept coming, there were even days that I found myself wondering if we would be make it out of this summer with our relationship in tact. It has been a summer for the books, or at least one hell of a chapter on resilience.
Before we dive into that mess, lets go back to the beginning when everything really was, too good to be true.
The start of spring brought with it our first year of farmers markets. We have been involved in five different markets this summer. We decided early on to use this summer to test out the waters of several markets so when we are preparing applications for next year we have a better idea of which markets work best for us. We were able to meet some amazing people and provide our Dreamy Blend salad mixes to people face to face. We love our markets! We had weeks where we were stacked with three or more markets including a couple back to back on an occasional Saturday. It has been a truly amazing experience and we are just so grateful that so many local markets welcomed us into their communities to share our produce with them.
For the first time, in what felt like a much longer time, had time to spend with our friends and family. It was starting seem like everything was naturally falling into place. After our first six weeks of markets, it was time for a very overdue vacation for this leafy duo.
The last couple weeks of June Nick and I took off on a two week adventure so he could finally meet my friends from Ohio and have a overdue trip to the beach. Meaning, Nick met my very dearest friend.
I can hardly call her anything less than a sister at this point. She has been my person (aside from Nick of course) for coming up on twenty years. I think the two of them meeting was honestly more anxiety ridden for me then even introducing him to my parents. Jo and I have been through it all. She had a front row seat to every medical emergency, broken heart, vicotry, and loss, we celebrated countless birthdays together and shared millions of laughs, and we’re not even 40!!
Even being almost 700 miles apart, every time we get together or just chat on the phone it’s as though no time has passed and we are still roommates trying to manage our way into adulthood leaning on one another for survival and well, life.
Even knowing Nicks heart, and knowing that she and our amazing band of brothers, Jo has the benefit of living in the same city as MOST of them so when I get to see so many of my favorite people with one trip! I knew that they would all become fast friends friends but there is always that little bit of panic when bringing some of the most important people in your life together for the very first time. I don’t know what I would do without any one of them.
I clearly didn’t have much to worry about..
As expected Nick became apart of my other family as quickly as he did with my parents and the fun was just getting started!
From Ohio we made our way east to my family’s summer cottage on Martha’s Vineyard for more time with loved ones and some good quality beach time!
The entire trip was a breath of fresh air that we both badly needed. We spent time with Nick’s older brother and his family who are one of the sweetest families I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. The more I am able to get to know Nicks family the more thankful I am to have each of them in my life. All of his brothers, their families and his parents are amazing people and I love all of them dearly, they have all welcomed me into their family in a way I never really knew was possible.
Being out east with Nicks family brought back so many memories of my own childhood running around the beaches, nightly ice cream treats, and terrorizing the adults with friends, cousins, and people picked up along the way. Kinora, the name of our family home, has held a large territory in my heart for as long as I can remember. It is also the place where Nick and I decided,separately, to take the leap into our little leafy adventure. The Vineyard is somewhere I will always hope to take babies of our own someday should this beautiful, messy life of ours allow it and it will always be a place where my constantly turning mind can find a little quiet time.
We made a second visit to Ohio on our way back home for one more hug from my dearest friends before heading back home to Iowa refreshed and ready to keep checking off boxes on our adventure with Leafy Dreams. We were so excited to get home to our farm and the dream we have been building every day for the past 14 months
We also had a few big gardens to dive back into when we got back into town, we took on a LOT this summer and we were well on our way to getting all of the pieces together for our next phase of Leafy Dreams and we were beyond excited for the months to come. We had plans to see another close friend and his partner when we got back into town and we were still floating on our little vacation cloud after visiting with them in the early part of July. Everything was prefect, almost too good to be true!
At least that’s what we thought for a couple minutes anyway.
As previously stated I am a transplant recipient, I am no stranger to heart break or challenges. I work hard, fight for what I believe in and protect my people sometimes to a fault. I know the darkest places that the mind can drift off to and I am a close friend of broken promises and misplaced trust. I have been blind sided by life altering situations more times than I think anyone would truly like to hear about and I am well versed in picking up the pieces after life hits your hard enough to knock you right back down to the ground. I have fought illnesses that doctors said I would never recover from and today I am the healthiest I have been since my teenage years. Some of the things I could tell you would shake even the toughest to the core. I know how hard life can really be. Nothing teaches you to toughen up faster than facing mortality a couple times before you’re legally old enough to have your first drink, among.. other things.
We are in many ways, still in the “picking up the pieces” portion of this summer but we got up off the floor, and we will not let these, or any other set backs keep us from bringing our dream to its full potential. It’s too important, it has the ability to bring too much good to too many people to loose our nerves now.
So what exactly have we been doing? Surviving to put it simply.
The day we got back from vacation we were handed an ultimatum. One that we absolutely, no matter how many people we talked to, had terms that unless you are one of the lucky individuals that have several hundreds of thousands of dollars laying around in cash would be unobtainable for anyone. So part 2 of our dream seemed to be crashing in around us.
We left the situation we were in and have been staying in a camper at Leafy and occasionally with a friend kind enough to house us during the times we need to be closer to town for several days in a row. Have I mentioned lately how lucky we are to have the amazing people in our lives that we have? We truly are very lucky as this mess could have, in many situations, been much worse for us than it has been.
When we got back to our farm we opened the door and walked into another state of shock. Everything was dead.. and I do truly mean everything. We had a technical issue with the farm and it was bad enough that it shut down every safely measure we have in place and every warning indicator that anything was even wrong. Leafy was running over a temperature of 110 degrees with over 100% humidity and it must have been like that for the entire three days we were away.
Was this it? Were we actually going to throw in the towel on this dream? The hit was hard and it was swift. The chefs and other local establishments we had been working to build relationships with could have easily told us to hit the streets if we couldn’t make our orders
I can assure you that we were both considering it quietly, even if we didn’t say it out loud. Between not having a roof over our heads and loosing our entire crop in the middle of market season it really was hard to say if we would be able to recover from this one. Insurance companies aren’t fond of the idea of insuring indoor farms, at least that’s what we keep running into in our neck of the woods. We of course have liability but in terms of lost crop and profit we have nothing. We had a full farm or fresh transplants, we lost over an acre of food and profit. It was devastating.
Again, have I mentioned how lucky we are to know the people we have met in the Des Moines area food crowd?! Local supporting local is very alive here and the food community is busting at the seems with untapped talent and the future of food in Iowa is nothing short of sensational. Another benefit of indoor farming is that loosing a crop doesn’t keep us our of the races for the entire season. We cleaned everything out and basically had a repeat of last summer.. cleaning, sanitizing, cleaning, testing water, nutrients, bringing in new seeds as all of ours were too wet to be safe. We disposed of so much product and lost 100% of our inventory, but we do have a crazy amount of compost now!!
It took us a few weeks just to get the farm to a place where we could simply start planting seeds again. That became the goal for the summer and as September gets into the last couple days of it’s first week, we are officially taking orders again and making our regular deliveries. We are taking on new clients and getting back to our normal routines. Nick took a new job working with a solar company and I worked freelance jobs while we were unable to work our markets to make up for as much of our lost income as possible. It’s a slow start, but it is a start. It will take us some time to recover our losses but we are determined to get there. We have 50% of our farm full of new, perfectly healthy plants, all technical issues have been resolved and tonight we will start to fill the towers of the other 50%.
Success isn’t always about perfection, I have found that more often than not, success should be measured by ones ability to keep going forward regardless of the barriers put in their way. If it’s something truly important to you, you find a way to make it happen and if you don’t, you don’t.
What can I say, I am, through and through, an actions speak louder than words king of girl.
And with that, lets skip to the good part (hopefully)!
You guys didn’t think that Leafy Dreams was just going to be one little indoor hydroponic farm did you? Come on!!! If you’ve been paying attention, Nick and I are more of the “go big or go home” type people. Our dream is to feed people in our community from the most natural way possible. Growing up around gardens and having land rather than a back yard in a neighborhood, watching my parents build their future step by step.. our little leafy dream is just getting started. Bringing home and getting our farm running and learning all the ins and outs about our well loved little farm (another work in progress) was just the first step.
So what comes next?
Something that we have been hoping to share with everyone for almost a month now. Something else Nick and I have been dreaming about for a long time, something else to bring to life and to use to feed our community our way..
With a little luck and one, silly, card finally falling into place (really friends, send all the happy thoughts, good vibes, prayers, and any other form of goodness you can spare for us) we’ll be able to officially share our news Friday and if not, I guess we’ll find our just how much more creative ingenuity we can muster up.
For now the only hint I can offer is pictured above.
Have we told you all how much we appreciate all of you and the belief you have had in us from day one? We mean it very truly when we say we would have never made it this far without each and every one of you, and today that is especially true.
Thank you, we love you!
Peace, love, and leafy dreams. To you and yours
With so much love
Amy