Smacked by Nothing

Oh my gosh. I'm back in Ohio. My goats and sheep were happy to see me. My little heeler pup is pretty mad and not talking to me right now.

I kinda feel like a freight train that just hit a brick wall. It was so much of a flurry of work and stress that was just building and building up to a 7 ton harvest and then crushing, crushing, crushing, and driving and learning and then BAM! Nothing.

Nothing is a weird feeling. I drove by my vines, dormant and ready for their winter sleep. I came home to black leaves of peppers in the gardens and the stupid turkeys ate my kale patch. My head is still spinning from all the stuff that I learned and I feel like I wrote down a lot but there's still so many more questions that are still rolling around in my brain but now there's no expert in front of me to make me laugh and tell me interesting facts about fermentation.

I can't help but think that I want to do it all over again. The learning curve just started and I was getting it down towards the end and then ... nothing.

My feet are cold here in Ohio and I'm listening to my new Pandora radio station and pacing around my house. I'm filling out paperwork to be a substitute teacher, but that's taking forever and the temp winter job market is pretty slim.

To add insult to the nothingness, I found a page for this budding vineyard just down the road with money to spare that is building a huge, amazing building with all their ducks in a row and everything in motion for a quick opening next year. Check out Gervasi Vineyards. Amazing. Wood fired pizzas and a bistro and winding stair cases, a nice big crush pad with all new equipment. So amazing.

Anyway, I'm adjusting priorities in my time off and trying to figure out what next year will bring. In the meantime, I'm fermenting hard cider, brewing my holiday beer, making as much music as I can, filling my freezer with veggies and meats from this year, picking up a brush again to paint crazy chicken paintings for Christmas presents, and finally sitting down and submitting some writing works to farm-type magazines about my crazy adventures in what I did, failed at, and did well this year.

This time of year is always hard, but I plan to keep my chin up and look forward to what is new and growing again in the spring.