Written by: Dr. Frannie Koe, MD
Edited by: Breanne Brazeale
Or, how can you manage any other project that you and your partner are not on the same page about?
I bought a farm over 16 years ago when I was single, but was dating my current partner. Determined to make this decision for my future alone, I did not want any input because he and I were not fully committed to our relationship. I had him come look at the property because he had more experience in determining the land’s value than I did.
I did not intend to buy a large piece of land. For me, the 76 acre parcel I purchased was huge, although in the west, this would be a pittance. Originally, I was planning on buying around 20 acres, with 40 acres being the absolute maximum. I was not sure what I would find. My goal was to have animals and mainly homestead. I wanted enough land so that I could live in the middle in privacy. I wanted plenty of trees.
My property was an old homestead. It has approximately 14 acres of cultivated fields and it was still being farmed with corn and soybeans when I bought it. It was such a beautiful property; I fell in love with it instantly. To this day, I am still in love with this place. There is a rock outcropping or bluff at the top of the mountain with an 80 foot cascading waterfall on the edge of my property. The only issue was a road was going down the middle of it! It seemed like a very quiet road when I would come at 2:00 in the afternoon, but I learned when living here there is rush hour every day in the morning and evening! I still have 50 acres of privacy on our home side of the road and a potentially productive 25 acres on the less private side of the road.
What about farming? We have so much land, I got excited and my mind went wild with all the possibilities. My dreams of reclaiming the land grew. Because someone had farmed the property previously, much of it had patches of chert rock where nothing green could live. I was so excited to see the mornings with dew on the patchy grass. It was beautiful!
After I moved here, we homesteaded, built barns, wood sheds, and cabins and began raising animals. I got chickens to begin with and, of course, dogs and cats. Then we got rabbits and my dream was to have goats, sheep and maybe even a cow or two to raise for meat.
Little did I know how much work it was to keep the land cut or how much weed-eating would need to be done every week all summer long. Nor did I know how much the road, which was over 100 hundred years old and on a hill, would wash out each time it rained. It turns into a muddy ditch!
Little did I know how much work it took to plant seeds in the fields without equipment before the rains came, so the seeds would germinate. I didn’t know when you get goats they can get out and have to be chased down! Many of these issues came up while I was at work, and much to his chagrin, I had to leave my partner Tim to handle the bulk of the problems. I didn’t know it at the time, but I have to travel frequently for medical conferences and to visit out-of-town family. Tim stays on the property while I am gone.
My partner Tim is an artist! He has a fine arts degree, and he did not have the dream of growing up as a farmer. Instead, his greatest aspiration is to hone his craft as an artisan builder of incredible handmade chairs. He grew up as something of a renaissance man, and out of necessity, learned how to do everything from building houses to working on cars to farming. But his genuine passion is woodworking, and it takes many hours a day to practice his craft.
Because I have to work and Tim does not want to be heavily involved, we have hired different people over the years to help with the mundane chores of keeping up a farm. I don’t want to diminish their hard work, but most of the folks we hired knew no more than we did. The hardest part of running our farm was the fact that I was not at home to direct their work, and Tim did not want to be a boss. Some of our folks were really young and stayed on their phones when we turned our backs. Others left tools and straps and other objects in the grass to be run over by the lawn mower and ruined the blades! Unfortunately, we had a few employees who stole things from us or were very slow at moving about while getting paid. Some did some really dastardly deeds around our property! Others were exceptional workers, but got too old to handle the labor. Our best employee was in his 70s and worked like a 20-year-old.
Now what do we do? I finally have been able to take some time three mornings a week to direct and take part in some farm projects. This is one of my greatest dreams, along with seeing patients in my clinic! I have now hired a personal assistant to help me and we work side by side. I get to work on my property and she helps me. It is actually like having three people get the work done because she keeps me from dragging my tail around. We get out and work hard for about three hours every morning when she comes!
This has taken the pressure off of Tim. I have also made a plan to work hard to make the animals as low maintenance for Tim as possible. We are working on systems that ensure lots of water and food are available to our animals when we leave for a day or so, and hopefully in the future, for up to two weeks, so Tim has minimal work to do to keep up with all the feeding. Now we have three goats that don’t get out if we keep the gates closed correctly.
We have five sheep, three rabbits, 25 ducks, 33 chickens, six cats and four dogs! I am working on designing feeding platforms to keep water cool and algae-free. I am working on how to keep the goats out of the dog food so our Great Pyrenees has food that the goats don’t rob. We have worked on finding someone local to come bush-hog the fields. That process used to take us 16 hours with our little tractor and now it only takes 2 hours! I love to weed-eat but don’t always have time and Tim says the mower hates me! He is still happy to do the remaining mowing and weed eating on our side of the road. We have hired a very hard worker who does the road and the other side of the property, so Tim has much less to do!
Tim still is very averse to having someone come inside our gate to work when I am not here. He does not want to be a boss, and he has a hard time with patience. I get that. He and I have very different personalities, which so often happens with couples. I have learned that people have to listen to the other and work hard to meet the needs of our partners in order to support our loved ones’ dreams while we pursue our own.
There is still a lot of work to be done on a farm with the upkeep of buildings and repairs. That is a given. We, as partners, do need to allow the other to work out their own systems and not be the reason for another not having his or her dream. They have to do their own work and not blame others! But with good communication, we can create systems to the benefit of both people in the partnership. It often takes a lot of thought and getting on YouTube, reading and learning to see what others do to fix the issues that are getting in the way of our dreams.