A dream deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
                                    Or does it explode?  - Langston Hughes    

On our first date, Eric mentioned his dream. Now that I am fully involved with the dream, I know that he totally glossed over it to lessen the shock value. As we were eating dinner he told me of his dream to one day live in the country and have 20 acres. It was the first, but certainly not the last time I heard of his "20 acre" dream.  

 

Everyone who knows Eric could tell you about his dream. He's been thinking and dreaming and planning about it for decades. Maybe since high school. It's one of those Langston Hughes dreams like the poem above is talking about. I have learned exactly what happens to a dream deferred over the last 6 years. In our case, at least, the dream has crept into every fabric of our being, every aspect of our lives and how we choose to pass time on this Earth.

 

Eric's dream has always been more than just "20 acres".  Twenty acres in the country seems like a totally rational and easy thing to accomplish. His dream is much more involved than that. Eric's dream, and how and when did it change from Eric's dream to our dream I'll never know, but somewhere over the last 6 years it did. So really "our dream" is to be energy and food independent. The goal (long term of course) is to build a house out of earth bags, grow our own food, and produce enough energy to supply our needs.

 

How could this turn into my dream? I'm a once Nordstrom loving, high heel wearing, everything except the country type of person. Well, it happened slowly. It started with having our first baby. We slowly started transitioning from there. We changed to only eating organic food, then local organic food, then growing our own food, and so on. Pretty soon I woke up and discovered that we were now canning a lot of our food, raising chickens and appalled at what was going on around our property as neighbors sprayed chemicals. What's a family to do?

 

Buy a Farm!

 

So, what became of the "20 acre" dream? Well, it became a 32 acre reality. We are in the final steps to buying our dream.

 

 

A huge thanks to Kristine for making me write this down. By the look of my last post, if I post anywhere in the next 2 years, I'll call it good!  My hope is to document this, so I will be able to remember that this is my dream when we are in the thick of it.