09/01/2026
The end of August has a some important of anniversaries for me — I moved to Louisiana in 2009 for what I thought would be one year for an AmeriCorps VISTA position and in 2016, I quit my job to focus on farming and Laughing Buddha Nursery full time.
Of course, there’s also the hurricanes — Katrina that was responsible for pulling me here for the AmeriCorps position at a rebuilding organization, Isaac which involved the composting facility Grant started taking in literal tons of tree and vegetative debris and Ida that we rode out at the farm.
All of these anniversaries kind of all swirl together, but mostly 2026 has me thinking about 10 years of full-time farming.
It feels like there’s so much I could say and yet it’s hard to articulate! It has been 100 times harder than I thought it would be in ways I couldn’t have known back then and also simultaneously 100 times more worth it than I could have imagined either.
There’s the soil and ecosystem rehabilitation, learning so much about yourself by learning about livestock and complex biological systems (and also sales and marketing and consumer behavior) and just the deep rootedness and knowing a tiny piece of the world so intimately.
Not to mention taking care of that land and watching it change and growing nourishing food from it.
I also definitely didn’t know how much I’d end up loving goats (and sweet besties like Pippa especially 🐐).
Maybe I’ll write more soon, but for now that’s all I’ve got! And here’s some throwbacks to 2016. 👉
