Every once in a blue moon, if you're lucky, you discover a piece of writing which inspires you in a most deep and profound way. The words, the content, the message it delivers and how you are feeling during the moment you read it or even during a specific period of your life, somehow all align and a chord of your heart is struck. What is a chord of the heart you wonder? Well, it's that part in you that makes you cry when you watch a sad movie, or signals the eruption of goosebumps all over when you feel a flow of gratitude from the smallest act of kindness. It's that feeling of inspiration, of lightness, that anything is possible after that cup of morning joe. It's the kind of writing that speaks from the heart, the beautiful kind, the simple and powerful kind. It's the kind of writing that you have to re-read just after you finished, just to appreciate it again.

I've been fortunate enough to have laid my eyes on such writing. It's an essay titled "Write It Down," by Jenna Woginrich, from a book of essays written by beginning farmers of our new generation. Greenhorns is the name of the book and grassroots nonprofit of young farmers which celebrates and supports novice cultivators. They also have an amazingly beautiful and resourceful blog of information and opportunities. Cheers to you Jenna! And here's to anyone with a dream:

"Write It Down"

By: Jenna Woginrich 

There's a fire in my woodstove, and between that and two glasses of homebrew, I'm very warm tonight. I just ate a simple dinner of pasta and tomato sauce, then (with a slight buzz and a full belly) I pulled my fiddle off the shelf and played a few Irish tunes to light up the room. In a little white farm house in Jackson, New York, "The Scartaglen Slide" and "Man of the House" trotted out with my bow while the dogs wrestled on the kitchen floor. I did a little dance and hopped about with them as I fiddled, the fray of gnashing teeth and my laughter tearing up the peace. It was quite a sight. 

        What a life this has become! Over my pigtails, I'm wearing a warm hat that I made from wool off the sheep in my pasture. There are eggs in my fridge from the birds in the coop, and there are chickens (and a rabbit) I harvested in the freezer. Beside the meat I've raised, I've made bread, sauce, jams, cheese, beer, cider, and pies. There is honey I pulled from my own hive and a truck in the driveway. I have a fine pair of geese. I even held one of their just-born goslings in my palm this time last fall. I've grown a garden full of vegetables and held pumpkins as big as bobcats. I've hunted pheasants and shot at foxes. I've heard coyotes sing in the pale moonlight and watched them from the edge of a sheep pen with a crook and a lantern. I caught a native trout on a dry fly and I know when a river is angry. I've raised rabbits. I've written books. I've sewn clothes. I've ridden a dogsled in the blue glow of a winter sunset, and I know how it feels to bottle-feed a baby goat on a porch during a spring rainstorm. I can now sit high in a dressage saddle and do a posting trot with a sixteen-hand horse. A little black-and-white rocket of a dog runs about as I write, and he's the future of this farm: my business partner, Gibson the Border collie. 

          We have a CSA in the works, we shepherds, and soon we'll be sending out packages with wool and thank-you letters to our inaugural subscribers. There are sheep on the way, too. Those ewes will be heavy with lambs and I'll bring them into the world this spring. 

          Tonight my plans don't involve any hot datesand certainly nothing like a night out on the townthis is a night on my farm. Cold Antler Farm. This place didn't exist in a gasp five years ago, and tonight I'll be reading about the proper bedding and pen setup for a pig.

          Tomorrow, I add a little swine to the mix. It seems as normal now as deciding which fabric softener to buy from the grocery store. This is my everyday life. 

          I've been told that I'm a goddamned fool. I must be. Only a fool would be living like this, doing all this, and dancing with dogs to tunes no one else knows anymore. You can call me whatever you please. I'm not changing a thing about this messy life. I like messy. It suits me. 

          Listen, I don't have much money, and I'm nobody's Daisy...but I'll be damned if I'm not happy tonight. I feel like the wealthiest beast in the world. And you know why all this happened? It happened for two simple reasons, and I believe this with all my heart. I landed here because:

          1.  I always believed I would (not could, not might, but would).

          2.  And because I wrote it all down. 

         Something that stuck with me in college was a blip I heard on the radio one night. A person was telling someone on NPR that if you want something to happen with your life, you need to get out a pen and paper and write it down. He said that only 2 percent of people with goals actually take the time to write them down, but out of that 2 percent studied, 90 percent achieved their dream. Something about the certainty of pledging it to yourself made it more real to the people he observed. I wanted to be in the 90 percent of that 2 percent. 

         When I knew a farm was something I wanted, then, I sat down and wrote out exactly what I hoped it would be. I wrote about a hillside outside my window, about the sheep, about the black-and-white dog by my side. I drew a pickup truck parked outside, and a veggie garden alive with a lush bounty.

         Okay, so not everything came true, but the point is that most of it did. I carried that piece of paper with me until it naturally disintegrated into scraps. It was my totem, my prayer. And I think because I physically held it on my person, I could never forget it was there, and always being on my mind forced me to always strive toward it. 

         That said, it's not a magic trick. It wasn't exactly as if it fell into my lap. Nothing was given to me; I had to earn it. I had to wheel and deal, and beg, borrow, and steal to make it happen. But it did. I pulled it off, paycheck to paycheck, a little at a time, until it rolled into something so epic it wore me down and built me up again. Somehow, I got a mortgage, a collie, a truck, some land. Somehow, I raised a barn. There are fences outside and a CSA on the books. Thanks to the help of many hands, my amazing parents and siblings, friends, blog readers, thoughts, prayers, and (I think) my daily diary online, my aspirations went from a pipe dream to a steam engine. If it was something a girl from Palmerton, Pennsylvania, could get, you can too. I promise.

          So if you are someone who wants your own land, your own farm, I urge you to sit down and write what you want, tonight. Write it all down, fold it up, and put it in your pocket. It might take five years before you're in your own kitchen dancing with a Border collie. But hell, those five years are coming, one way or the other. Might as well have a farm at the end of it all. 

          And keep dancing in your kitchen. It can only help.