Buzzard Roost Branch Estate

It’s officially official.

The farm is in business.

Growing up with plenty of cows around, I enjoyed the idea of having my own garden away from the family plot, but I never thought I’d have the farm as a second job, much less be running it.

As you might imagine, retirement poses a threat to some people rather than the prospect of reaching the time in one’s life where energy can be devoted towards the pursuit of hobbies or simply taking life at a slower pace now that the traditional achievements of adulthood have passed. My mother is such a person.

Her excitement about the whole enterprise has been similar to seeing a small child eye the slow, yet constantly bulging pile of gifts underneath a Christmas tree. There are blips of uncontrollable joy when she checks the fleet of mobile greenhouses for signs of life; I don’t know if she was even half that excited when she saw the lumpy sonogram of me during her second trimester.

What I do know is these simple pleasures are hard to come by in this day and age. The effortless and eternal reward of feeling freshly tilled soil under one’s feet and smelling the heat of a late afternoon in the air. The quiet euphoria of existing for at least a few moments within nature as an agent of its great cycle. That’s really why we started all this.

It is of course fun and therapeutic to tromp around in the dirt for a few hours while we fuss about the heat and watch the calves mooch in the small branch that runs through the pasture, but at the same time it’s a ritual. A self-perpetuating rhythm of emotions and motivations that tether us back to our people who worked the same earth a hundred years ago and forward to the generations that will follow long after we’re gone.

So, welcome to the Roost and we’ll see you when you stop by.