I’ve been cut-n-pasting old blog posts from our first year on the farm and also from my bachelorette days, and yesterday after a good two hours of living in the past it felt strange to leave the computer. I’d re-entered that headspace of a twenty-something: pre-kid, pre-cancer. That time of possibility and excitement, before the farm became half an acre and then 24 acres of crops. We loved farming for most of our 8 years there, but we stopped having fun in the final two years. Too many employees to hire and manage. Too many to-dos. I don’t know how we would have continued, if Brock’s cancer hadn’t taken the choice away from us. I think we would have kept farming, at least for a few more years. Headhunted more people-managers to share the work with us, maybe tried hiring migrant labourers, and definitely continued to mechanize the more tiresome and exhausting work.

Or maybe we would have decided the stress was too much, and chose to focus on our family more. Moved to Chicago so Brock could have done a Master’s program. I would have befriended American mamas at the playgrounds and started writing about culture shock.

What breaks me the most about Brock being sick (aside from the obvious “dying” part) is when I compare him to the Brock he used to be. The Brock who ran Makaria Farm was exhaustingly vibrant, full of business ideas and inventions. Nearing 250 lbs of barrel-chested goodness. The Brock I love now is 169 lbs of skin and bones. We have been so lucky that the cancer hasn’t affected his brain: he’s still Brock, still drafting farm plans and asking questions that don’t occur to anyone else.

I love reading these old posts and remembering the early years of our story together.