Waking Dreams

It's one of those nights. I can't sleep. I'm lying in bed staring at the ceiling and dreaming of owning my own Colorado ranch.

There was a time not too many years ago where I wanted to live in a fancy loft in the heart of downtown. I never got the fancy loft, but I did live in a nice place right on the very cusp of downtown Austin. It was pretty fantastic and I have no regrets. It satisfied my craving. But I get claustrophobic in the big city, and I found that I bored quickly of all the shops, and since bars and nightlife don't do anything for me anymore I found myself feeling unfulfilled. I never got bored with Town Lake or Barton Springs, but I wanted something more. I guess I felt a little like I lived in a magazine spread. It was cool, but what was I actually doing? I found myself longing for a quiet place in the country, much like what I had growing up. But I wasn't into long commutes, especially in Austin traffic. I had also spent a good decade fantasizing about living in the mountains of Colorado and fully intended to do so when the time was right. I was starting to feel like the time was right.

So I made a brilliant and extremely fortunate career move that landed me in Colorado, specifically in Boulder, right where I always wanted to be. By that time I was so ready to get out of the crowded city that I was of a mind to live alone in the mountains. Indeed I entertained my friends with crazy ideas like living in a teepee. (People actually do this very successfully here.) I no longer want to try living in a teepee, partly because I know I would be bored out of my mind, but mostly because I now realize that that was just me trying desperately to get away from it all to recharge. My alone time is extremely important to me and if I don't get enough, well, I get a little nutty. Along those same lines, I also now realize I don't want to be a solitary mountain man. The mountains can be extremely lonely. And cold. While I highly value "me" time, I don't actually want to be a hermit. I love community.

I have found myself very much at home in Boulder. It's not too big. Rush hour lasts from roughly 5PM to 5:30PM and it only slows me down for a few blocks trying to get around the University, though it's rare for me to come home during that time anyway. It's quiet, clean, beautiful, convenient, extremely progressive, has all the comforts of a big city with few of the big city problems, AND it's an outdoor lover's paradise all at the same time. I can walk to everything from gourmet restaurants and designer fashions to mountain trails that feel like they're a thousand miles from nowhere. There's a year-round creek complete with waterfalls, wild birds and trout right outside my window and central park is on the opposite bank. The largest and by far the best farmer's market in the whole state is 3 blocks from my home. I haven't explored too much of Colorado yet, but Boulder would be a tough place to beat.

And yet I still find myself longing for something more. A more perfect city? Bigger mountains? What could I possibly want? I want a farm. I love Boulder. I love Colorado. I don't want to leave and have no intention to do so, but sometimes I have those same old feelings of being crowded and a bit bored of city life even here in Boulder. Let me explain.

Back in Austin I rediscovered food the day I set foot in my first Whole Foods. That was close to 8 or 9 years ago now. I couldn't believe a grocery store could be so beautiful, that food could be so amazing and that people could care so much about it. I discovered organic and I was hooked. Over the years my fascination with food grew and grew, and by the time I left Austin I was dividing my food time equally between Whole Foods and the farmer's market (which is really very good in Austin.) By the time of this writing, I've almost entirely outgrown even Whole Foods (which we have plenty of in Boulder) and I now get over 90% of my calories from local organic farms and ranches. As anyone who has read my blog or knows me knows, I also do my own canning and baking and freezing and butter making and have complete control over my food from the time it's picked until the time I eat it. I'm obsessed with it like I've never been obsessed with anything else. It's like I've finally found something in life that makes me feel fulfilled. I've done a lot of fun things in life and I still have many things I enjoy, but food is one of the few things that has real purpose for me. I mean, it's food. Someone once summed it up nicely: "Money is illusion. Food is real." What could be more rewarding than coaxing the most delicious, nutritious edibles from nature year after year? The very essence that keeps me alive and healthy isn't something that comes from a store. It isn't something that I have to trade for green paper with a corporation in order to get. It's something that earth gives us for free, if only we know how to ask.

So here I am in Boulder and everything is wonderful, except I still can't grow most of what I eat because I have no space. Sometimes I feel trapped in the city. I don't have one of those idyllic 30 acre organic farms just outside the city. You've seen them, at least in pictures: rolling green meadows with a few horses grazing near a big red barn under an azure sky with rugged, snow-capped mountains forming a back drop. Yep, that's eastern Boulder county. So far as I'm concerned, it's the best of all worlds. It's just five miles from the heart of Boulder, just fifteen minutes drive to the mountains. There's rich prairie soil for growing crops and grazing livestock, and plenty of mountain streams to water it all. It's quiet out there. It's country, but it's not isolated. Your neighbor's house is far enough away that you might not even be able to see it, and odds are they're Obama-loving, gay-rights supporting, organic-farming liberals with Ph.D's that you'll see down at the farmer's market every weekend where, by the way, there's a huge demand for local organic produce and more than enough well-to-do people who are more than happy to pay a premium for it. And they aren't just mindless consumers. No, these people know what they want and they love it. I too could be one of those farmers if only I had $3 million to buy a farm.

My dream farm, by the way, exists here. It's called Abbondanza (Italian for "bountiful") and they are Boulder's premier organic farm. Seriously, you should see their farm stand. Whole Foods can't even do a spread like they can. And they're seed savers too. They grow hundreds of varities of vegetables on the farm, many are heirloom varities, and they save all their own seeds which they sell or replant the following season. They're completely self sufficient! And no one at the market offers the variety they do.

So for the time being I do my canning and churn my butter from the raw ingredients I buy from my local farmers, and I tend my little city organic garden plot and dream of the day I have my own little orchard, rows of organic greens and livestock grazing in the pasture.

My one real outlet for getting my farmer/rancher fix at this time is the horse farm I volunteer with. Bini, the owner, has seen too many moons to garden and so it now lies covered in weeds. However she has offered the space for me to bring it back to life if I'm so inclined. As spring approaches the dream of what that garden could become weighs on my mind. My only hesitation is investing work and, inevitably, money into a farm that isn't mine. I won't be the first person in history to work a farm I don't own, but since this is (for now at least) a hobby rather than my livelihood I think it'll be worth it.