Photo by Kyle Smith

This month of reckoning, estimating, projecting, evaluating, reconciling, and then starting over again and repeating the process is nearly at a close.  

The annual inventory is done.  The website is updated with what’s available for sale, my note pad is scratched up with lists of our overstocks, and the annual report is littered with percent changes on everything from feed costs to repair and maintenance costs and sales projections.

And every year, I come to the same conclusion:  If I could just push the business a tiny bit more, I could finally get income to surpass expenses.  

Slowly, over the decades, the income has grown.  But the expenses have always outpaced it.  

And I find myself at the end of Januar,y exhausted for a year that has not yet begun, wondering, as I do from time to time, if we’ve made a big mistake giving our lives to a venture that offers no retirement, that requires the dedication of fellow hopeless romantics to show up in all kinds of weather to move chickens, feed pigs, gather eggs, fry the sausage, bake the croissants, make the omelets, stock the store and pack the orders. 

To make myself feel better, I attach a fresh spreadsheet to the cash flow projections.  I label it INVISIBLE INCOME.  And I comb through the budget once more, picking out every expense the farm is carrying for us that we would have to pay for on our own if we didn’t have a business: the taxes on the land, the food, the car, the cell phones….The list grows, a pecuniary

salve to allay my fears and remind myself that this isn’t all crazy.

And then Kyle sends me this photo, a reminder of all that “income” that cannot be recorded on a spreadsheet.

Kyle and Jack are covering for Saoirse and Jenn this month.  Jenn wanted some time to travel, Saoirse spent the month working for Plowshares coffee down in NYC while she explored the city.  Staring at this photo, I’m reminded about the egg issue.  There’s  a shortage in the stores due to avian flu.

But we still have eggs.  

And we still have romantic fools who care enough about this land, these animals and the food we grow to show up in January to feed the pigs, bring hay to the sheep, and keep gathering those eggs.  

Mom, another romantic fool, continues to wash the eggs and bring them down to the Honor Store for the customers.

Dad, that romantic fool, continues to sit and answer my questions about production and then heads back out to the barn in the worst weather, keeping things running.  

Bob, that romantic fool, keeps packing orders and moving boxes as we count and calculate, and he sits with me for hours in the woods as I step away from the computer to try to make sense of the numbers.

I do the best I can to coax the figures to balance.  The process truly is helpful as we make decisions for the coming season.  But then it’s time to push it to the side to go back to playing music, meeting up with friends, working on repairs, planning cafe menus, putting in the orders for the year, sitting by the fire, cooking up a pot of something and heading out into the snow.

That’s because dollars are just a tiny part of the great calculation.  The rest is the deep comfort that comes from knowing we have a place here.  Forces will collude to keep us going — whether it’s the spirit of the customers who keep coming back, or certain good fortune gifted from the universe, or a crew of dedicated romantic fools who understand  how important it is right now to keep showing up to gather the eggs.