folio

Farming is not for the faint hearted. If we do follow our hearts and settle here once the children have finished their studies, we will have our work cut out. We don’t have extensive lands, but sufficient to keep us occupied.

Tea bushes growing on the hillside, at an angle of 45 degrees. Hazelnuts on the gentler inclines. Fruit trees and vines scattered inbetween. And in any bare plot, small patches brimming with beans, cabbage, cucumber, corn, peppers and tomatoes to fill the stomachs of the household.

Climbing the hill just now to visit one of our remoter fields, precisely how much work is involved immediately hit home. On the steep bank behind a tea field we have had cleared numerous times, we saw that nature has once more claimed it back, returning land once planted with new tea back to forest.

I don’t think we will try to clear it again, but will instead treat it as a land bank, possibly to be sold if we or the children hit hard times. It’s funny that all of this was a childhood dream, as I yearned to be Almonzo in Farmer Boy. I never imagined it might become reality.