I almost became a goat cheese farmer.
When I crawled out from under the bed, once Canada was decided upon, the question became, okay, but where?
I’ve always been a foodie.
I love to cook.
Sicilian blood runs within me; I was reared in Southern hospitality. I really didn’t have a choice. It’s as much me as my breath.
So when my husband told me about a goat cheese farm for sale in Quebec I was buying rubber boots and getting the baguettes ready.
Now neither of us know anything about goats. We don’t even eat much cheese. But the idea of getting dirty, creating something with our own hands, passing down a tradition to our children was delicious.
My husband hopped on a plane to NY, rented a car, and drove deep into the Quebec countryside, while I stayed in Uganda dreaming of Billy Goat Gruff.
The farm wasn’t what we thought. The house in need of too much work. The area a bit too secluded. But it was food. And it was dirt.
What I craved: to be close to nature; to garden; to bathe the kids in leaves; to reconnect with something higher.
To see stars.
“…. I think the girl
knelt down somewhere in the woods
and drank the cold water of some
wild stream, and wanted
to live.” –Mary Oliver
—one of my strongest memories of childhood are hot summer nights, sticky skin, heavy air, catching lightning bugs in jars. When I think of childhood I think of that wild light, captured only briefly to stare at in wonder. The wild stream of endless summer nights that call me still—
I wanted to give my children the wild.
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