When I graduated from Kutztown in 2005, my first post-college job was in Knoxville, Tenn. I moved there by myself to work for a television network's website. I rented the bottom floor of an old boarding house in a historic district called Fourth & Gill. This was my old bedroom in said apartment. I laughed when I came across this photo because I'm pretty sure that old place could fit two of my present cabins inside it. Maybe three. It feels like ages ago. A past life.

This picture was taken the day I brought Jazz home, which was in July of that same summer. I was alone two weeks in the world before I adopted him. They were an awful two weeks. Women of a certain disposition should not be alone in a new city without a good dog. They feel awkward and pointless without a leash in their hands in public — but give them a large, kind dog and they are sirens. They can get by without a good man just fine, but never without a good dog.

I am of that disposition.

I look at this picture and can't help but smile, tilt my head, and raise an eyebrow. Back then all I wanted was to be a designer. I wanted a board position in my AIGA chapter. I wanted to be out in Market Square with my dog. Jazz, by the way, was never intended to be on snow. He was a southern city pet. Sure, he might pack in the Cumberlands with me, but he wasn't going to be a sled dog ...

Little did I know 18 months later I'd be in a farmhouse in Northern Idaho with him, another Siberian, and a sled parked in the garage. That all happened because of a cove in the Smoky Mountains, a night with fireflies at an abandoned camp, and a jump from a waterfall where a young man died the following day. Those are all separate and complicated stories, but they are why I'm writing you from a small cabin in a New England hollow. They are the alchemy that created the hope you know as Cold Antler Farm. (Which, if you're new to this blog, hasn't actually happened yet. Welcome to the ride.)

Life can change fast. It doesn't really change any other way.

Anyway, I thought this snapshot from a past life might give some comfort to those of you who dream of goats and chickens and a cabin in the woods but are presently sifting through take-out menus in your current metropolis. Please remember, It was just a few years ago I had one dog in a city apartment. Now I'm in this beautiful mess.

Tomorrow I'll visit a brewery and probably come home wanting to make my own beer. Sunday, Steve and I are going to slaughter an angry rooster I raised out of the palm of my hand. Right now I'm going to go outside and close the coop door before the rain comes. If you wish you too were closing a coop door you can take a deep breath and rest easy tonight. I promise if it's something you really want — it'll happen. You'll find a way because you must. And when it does happen, be ready — because it'll come fast. Life doesn't happen any other way. At least not the parts worth living.

Read more from Jenna at Cold Antler Farm

Photo by Jenna Woginrich

I've been hurt by this farm. Really hurt. I've been bitten, butted, cut, scarred, and brought to tears from pain, stress and exhaustion. This happens over and over and I'm always alone. There are things I won't blog about because I don't want my mother to worry. There are things that happen that terrify me.

This year was the hardest yet. I planted my largest garden ever, raised the most animals, and took on more work and personal projects than any sane human being should. Now that the year is almost over, and the south side of October is days away, I can let out a long sigh and tell you it was all worth it. I found a balance in it all, kept my blinders on, and everything got done. The garden was tilled, weeded, and harvested. The two-week-old goat kid grew up into a spit-fire. The young birds are almost full-sized chickens now and the rabbit doe is due to bear kits any night. Yes, the hive was lost. And yes, I failed the sheepdog I once called my own, but you'll have this from time to time. And you and I don't have enough nights to list my faults. There are many, some are awful. Trust me.

If you read this blog and find it overly positive, dramatic, or analytical: that's because writing about my choices is my daily therapy. I don't see a shrink—I write to 40,000. Sharing my stories and photos on this blog is like a long exhalation. I depend on the people who read this because in the shower I lose count of the cuts and bruises and I want to know they belong to something bigger than my body. All things considered, I am quite small.

Some nights I barely fall asleep, isomniatic from worrying about the delicate balance that is my work life, family life and farm life. I am so grateful for Jazz, my old dog, who looks at me every day like the wise bodhisattva that he is and I will never be. A good dog can walk up to you, slowly, one paw in front of the other, and sit down next to you with great stillness. I feel him lean into me and I realize I'm not the only animal on this farm. I am never alone and it is bigger than us both. He rests and lets me scratch behind his ears and only when he knows I understand the world again, pads off. Jazz isn't my child and he isn't my pet either. He's a good dog. Nothing more.

For quite some time now, people without dogs seem broken to me.

I am a farmer without a farm, a shepherd without a sheepdog, and in love with this big, stupid world without a lover. That's fine. Sometimes I foolishly think everything would be better if I had a mortgage, a collie, and a man. But I know myself well enough to see the idiocy in such black-and-white thinking. I know better. We all know better. Maybe these things will come or maybe I'll be hit by space trash tomorrow. It really doesn't matter. It's the wanting that fuels us. It's the hope. That desire to attain the life you want, whatever it is, and to fold your ears back and run into the wind like you're in harness—is life. Cold Antler farm isn't a place—it is an idea. Knowing I want it means I am already home. Actually getting there, is moot.

Read more from Jenna at Cold Antler Farm 

Photo by JOANNA CHATTMAN

There has been much press regarding the bee colony collapse disorder and its effects on agriculture. As a gardener, I also have been concerned about whether the loss of honeybees would have a direct effect on my garden production. A recent article, Successful Beekeeping with Your Own Honeybees, suggests that backyard gardeners might consider keeping a hive of bees to improve the pollination rates in their own yard and in neighboring gardens.

So, I was pleasantly surprised last week to discover a couple dozen bees noisily collecting on the flowering wild arugula that I let go to seed. I actually went to the garden to cut some zinnias for a new kitchen bouquet and had to lean over the arugula flowers to get to the zinnias. I was suddenly aware that my middle was hovering quite close to the buzzers, who seemed not at all concerned by my proximity.

As I stepped back to better view the whole scene, I discovered there were many honeybees and bumblebees on the zinnias as well as the arugula, plus a number of different kinds of butterflies. How exciting! The existence of these pollinators must be partially responsible for the abundance of cucumbers, tomatoes and green beans in my new garden this summer. I plan to start a flower garden in the backyard next spring and that surely will attract more bees, butterflies and other pollinators. 

Have you had an abundance or a dearth of pollinators in your gardens this season? You can share your experiences in the comments section below.

*It has been suggested the phrase, “it’s the bees’ knees,” popular in the 1920s, referred to the pollen collected on the midsection of bees legs, and pollen is a good thing for bees to collect.

Photo by Heidi Hunt

A few weekends ago, I found myself at the equivalent of a livestock tailgate party. I was in the thick of the Schaghticoke Poultry Swap — a shindig that happens every spring. It's quite an event. What started as a small gathering to trade and sell chickens has evolved over the years into a parking lot festival of sales and bartering. Since the swap’s inception, the stock has expanded well beyond chickens. This year, there were ducks, geese, quails, rabbits, lambs, kids and more (I swear I walked past a box of puppies). And while it wasn't on the roster — had someone walked through the fairgrounds parking lot with a horse — I wouldn't have blinked an eye.

I was there with a short list. I needed some new laying hens to replace birds that passed away over the winter, nothing drastic. But I was also there hoping to find a very specific animal. I wanted to drive home with a young goat kid, hopefully a spunky buckling. I had been researching pack goats (goats trained to help carry gear on hiking trips via panniers or saddlebags), and if the stars aligned I planned to take home my own backcountry prodigy that same day.

The circumstances had to be perfect though. I wanted an Alpine, a breed known for its trail-hardiness and loyalty. I also wanted an animal that could be bottle-fed and hand-raised, learning from its earliest stages to follow and depend on me. (A job I thought would be endearing and simple ... not a strict regime of mixing milk replacer at 4:45 a.m. But you pay as you go in this world. And I had plenty of time to learn how much would be involved in my first goat.) Consequences were not on my mind. I was about to buy a goat.  

When I arrived at the goat pen, I melted. I watched the dozen kids and lambs romp in the back of the truck and then leap out into their grass-lined pen. You haven't seen adorable ’til you've seen a pile of two-week-old goats trying to decide who gets to drive the truck home. They butted and leaped, ran circles and bleated up at the sky. They pretty much terrorized the tepid lambs and loved every second of it. I was one of dozens of people hanging around the pen, laughing and smiling, but unlike most gawking at the show, I was shopping.

"Do you have any bucks?" I shouted across the pen to someone with a clipboard, trying to sound like I knew what the hell I was talking about, "I'm looking for a buckling I can raise for draft work?" They didn't point and laugh at me. My confidence grew.

"Just that one!" The man in charge pointed to a small brown pile of hell leaping out of the truck bed, crashing into a random siblings, and then getting up to do it again. Uh oh. Maybe this goat business was a little more than I could handle? After all, my sheep don't mosh for kicks. But it was too late. He noticed a sucker in the crowd, shook his big floppy ears, and looked up at me with his childish brown eyes. This guy was going home. Might as well clear off the front seat of the car.  

I paid the enabler and quickly found out my new adoptee was half Alpine and half Toggenburg. Two breeds known for their mountain savvy. He was mostly brown with white stripes across his face and along his underbelly. I carried him over my shoulder like a toddler. As we made our way back to the car, I heard more than one person say, "Well isn't he cute? Better her than me!" My confidence waned.

I drove back to Cold Antler with new laying hens in the back of the station wagon and a new kid curled up in the front passenger seat. I could not get over how calm and small he was in the car. He slept like a lamb on valium the entire ride. Goats, huh? What could be easier? I named him Finn.

As it turned out, many things are easier. Most things are easier, actually. Since Finn's came to my farm, he's been a delight, but he's also been a nonstop source of trouble and trickiness. There have been the highs of feeding a suckling darling in my lap on the cabin porch during a soft morning rain — and the lows of screaming at him to get out of the lettuce patch when he broke into the garden (several times). Guess what? Goats can learn to climb chain-link fencing. Over the past few weeks, this kid has gnawed on my last nerve, and yet still managed to brighten my worst days. It's hard not to laugh when you watch a young buck jump and twist in the air or headbutt a rooster. The highs are high.

I'm lucky to have a job that lets its employees bring pets to the office. So, while Finn was being bottle-fed we'd show up at the grind together. He'd wait in the car in a big dog crate until lunch and then run around the company lawn, picking play fights with Labradors or doing some landscaping around the building while we ate out on the picnic tables. Welcome to Vermont, where everyday is bring-your-kid-to-work day.

My hope is that Finn's pack training will be the ambassador I need to discover the great outdoors again. Before I had a farm, you couldn't keep me out of hiking trails and National parks. Now, if enough free time from the homestead reveals itself, I'm too whipped to hike. Free time is currently spent in hammocks or playing the banjo on the porch — never on the trail. But that's all going to change, and soon. As summer rolls in, the garden is planted, and all the young animals are maturing, you'll find me out in those Green Mountains from time to time. A girl and her goat, paying as they go.

P.S. If you want to keep track of Finn, stop in anytime at http://coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com

Photo by Tim Bronson

PHOTO BY JENNA WOGINRICH

Spring is taking over Cold Antler Farm and all of us are happily surrendering to it. The snow is melting off the garden fences, the sheep are starting to hoof up green mosses and young grass, and the chickens are getting brave enough to hop down to the stream that was once blocked by snow. There are buckets and tubing on every sugar maple in the neighborhood, and with every spare minute I’m thinking about plans for spring chicks and new beehives.

Yes friends, spring is finally here. Time to start farming.

Regardless of whether your homestead is your backyard or a couple acres off grid, it's time to start planning for the spring. If you're looking into chickens and plan on ordering from a hatchery, take some time to find the birds closest to you. If you have a particular breed in mind (I'm looking forward to raising some Black Silkie Bantams) you can use the Mother Earth News Hatchery Finder to find the right birds at the right time for you.

You can start sowing seeds indoors for early crops like lettuces, peas and broccoli. And if you haven't already stepped outside, crossed your arms, and given your garden plot a long hard look — it's time to start planning where the bounty will begin. If you're new to gardening, don't be shy because you're in good company. Scads of new homesteaders and urban gardeners are taking the reins for the first time, and blogs and forums are heating up as they discuss big plans for new gardens. Sites like YouGrowGirl are a constant inspiration for me to get my fingernails dirty.

 Maybe this year is the year you'll start that new project? The rain barrel or compost turner you've secretly been eyeing in catalogs all winter may deserve a place in your budget. But before any dollars are spent on large purchases for your farm, make sure you use the elbow room spring allows to research exactly what you need. Save yourself the problems of returning items that don't work for you, or the disappointment of getting that prefab coop only to find it's 3 inches too wide.

 Most of all, enjoy these warmer days. Before you know it we'll be pulling off ticks and cursing the heat, so revel in the honeymoon while it lasts darlings.

By Jenna Woginrich

If you’re the first of your friends to move to the country, get some chickens and plant an organic garden there will be some inevitable social fallout. It’s not your fault, but you’re going to raise the eyebrows of some of your more cynical friends. While there are plenty of people out there excited about self-reliance, there are just as many folks jaded by the hype and greenwashing that society has been slinging at us ever since Al Gore shared his slideshow. As green living gets trendier, it can’t help but jump the shark. You just can’t blame people for rolling their eyes when oil companies air commercials about sustainability.  

Around the time your coffee table starts to fill up with seed and hatchery catalogs you can expect the occasional jab for subscribing to the country cliché. The suspicious will cross their arms and peg you as just another converted-starry-eyed-back-to-the-lander. With an air of certainty and rib-nudging judgment, they’ll announce that at the end of all your dirty fingernails and feed sacks you’ll learn nothing that hasn’t been learned a million times before. That the merits of country living have already been printed in thousands of books, seen in endless movies, and are currently being spouted as gospel by hundreds of others just like you, probably even at the same farmers market. They’ll start doling out references from old episodes of Green Acres. There will be melting glacier jokes. You know the drill, you’ve been there. These otherwise wonderful folks will point their fingers at your western shirt and call you another sucker for the country life.

Here’s the thing. They’re right.

Of course they’re right. Agriculture isn’t exactly new to the scene, and deciding to turn your life from consumer to producer (even if it’s just a few gardens and some chickens) is a step taken by throngs before us. There is nothing new, or special, or innovative about it. The Simple Life has been experienced by humanity since the fertile crescent, was, well... fertile. The results are ridiculously cliché. If you join the coverall club you’re not going to have any experiences that many of us haven’t already had, and will continue to have indefinitely. Sorry kids, this show is always a rerun.

But you know what I say to all this? So what. I mean isn’t that the point of all this? To get your hands dirty and join the secret society of tractors and baling wire? To be able to nod your head around the campfire when other gardeners talk about blight and potato beetles, and to learn the same sense of satisfaction of growing your own food? There is comfort in knowing you’re living a cliché. It means the results of the lifestyle are so stereotypical they’re guaranteed. And while it may not be clever — it’s clear that there are a reason some clichés stick around. Some are good enough to be true. Roll your eyes all you want son. This stereotype’s got some eggs to collect.

PHOTO BY JENNA WOGINRICH

Here in Vermont there is plenty of snow. And when there is snow on the ground in rural America, the chainsaw-buzz of snowmobiles isn’t far behind. But for some of us there’s a different (and might I add quieter) style to getting around over the icy roads and trails. It’s clean, it’s green, and it runs on renewable energy. Yes folks, meet the dogsled.

My own dogs are working homestead housedogs. Their names are Jazz and Annie and while they may seem like couch potatoes when you visit the farm during high garden season — they are a force to be reckoned with when the rhubarb is under 3 inches of ice. When the snow falls we’re outside and in harness. Thanks to our lightweight Swedish-style kicksled we’re able to mush for a few miles at a time, even with just a two-dog team. The super light 20-pound sled and the help of my kicking keeps us going at a decent clip. Besides providing exercise for us all, another benefit of mushing is that it helps me do everyday chores around the farm like hauling firewood and running out to the mailbox to bring in packages.

And folks, you don’t need a pack of huskies to start sailing by those SUVs stuck in ditches. All you need is a healthy and happy dog with a love of running. Dog sports like skijoring (attaching a dog in harness to a belt you wear around your waist while you cross country ski) can be practiced with just one dog. It sounds awkward but the combination of a properly harnessed dog and your skis can make the usual winter walk a full-blown mushing adventure. Not to mention confuse and frighten your neighbors, which, let’s be honest, is half the fun.

If you’re interested in getting your own dog in harness, check out sleddogcentral.com. It’s a web community of people dedicated to mushing and skijoring. There you’ll find everything from local mentors, area clubs and respected outfitters. It’s a great home base for forums, advice and training tips. I suggest you check it out soon — that lab over there on the couch looks like he could use a few laps around the park.

See you on the trail!