This section presents information about Rosemary's life on Seven Springs Farm.

(Rosemary and Ron own and operate the farm together.)

"So did you-did you and Ron decide to come to Virginia together?"

"Yes."

"That was a…group decision?"

"Yes, we both when we first met we realized we both wanted to be in the country, wanted to have a farm, wanted to homestead.  So, we moved in that direction, and we started looking for farms together.  We looked for a few years before we bought this one."

"That is a long time."

"Yeah, it is.  And then, well we were still working in Pennsylvania.  What we did was, we, ya’ know we had this landscaping and tree works, and we’d work spring, summer, and fall.  And then we bought this camper top for the pickup truck, and we would travel in the wintertime.  And we could just camp in the-ya’ know because we had heat, the camper top had heat. And we were able to…travel and look for farms that way."

"So what was your criteria?  For your farm?"

"Not near any commercial farming, so we didn’t want to be near spraying, we wanted to be insulated from a lot of heavy cropping.  We wanted a good community, wanted it to feel like a community would fee. We wanted it to be beautiful.  The Appalachian Mountains we really liked, we looked in a lot of states in the Appalachian mountain range.  (coughs)  Affordable. (laughs)  Which (…) Pennsylvania at that point. Good soil.  Not real far, not real isolated, you know close enough to a city so that you can at least have some, um, chance at making a living.  ‘Cause we didn’t wanna’ have jobs.  Ya’ know, we definitely wanted to make a living here."

"Wow. So how did it all happen?  You moved here…and what-cha-do?"

"We bought this place. (coughs)  We made pretty good money landscaping tree surgeries, so we-I owned a house in Pennsylvania that Ron bought in to, and as we were working, and as we would make extra money, we’d start paying off the house.  So when we found this place, we had our house almost paid off.  And it was in a higher priced area outside Philadelphia, so we actually bought the farm for the same money we sold the house for...So that enabled us to move here without a mortgage.  So we got here and we started working-we just started working.  We weren’t making any money, we just started working on the house, and plowing up the garden for vegetables..."

"Is that the house Ron lives in, the house you built together?"

"Yeah, we didn’t build it, it’s a 1907 house.  And um, we started fixing it up.  To live in.  And we started the garden, fixed up the barn, you know there’s so much to do. Just to get going.  We planted trees, we thought we were gonna’ start a nursery at first.  So we planted a whole bunch of trees, we started planting-we moved a bunch of plants here, we brought a whole landscape of full of stuff, perennials and blueberry plants, and trees and stuff.  So we did all that, and we also went back to Pennsylvania, um, occasionally, to work, we kept some customers, landscaping customers. So we’d go back for a couple of weeks and work as much money as we could and make some money.  We did that for… the first year, and then we kinda’ gave up on that idea."

"‘Cause that’s a lotta' work."

"Yeah, going back and for-we didn’t wanna’ do it anyway, we just, um..."

"Needed money."

"We just needed the money, yeah.  So then, it was really quite a long time before we started making money, and we were just living off some of the extra money we had from our savings and sales on the house, just wha[tever], I don’t know where.  It was just complicated. We had to get the mortgage to buy this, and then we got rid of the mortgage when we sold the house, and it just, ya’ know, all that stuff…"

"Um-hum, money’s complicated."

"Yeah, yeah, it was, and then the next year we started the CSA.  With 20 members. Which wasn’t much income, but at least it started..."

"Was that in’91?"

"’91, yeah."

"’91 was the first year?"

"Um-hum."

"That’s neat.  You had 20 members?  So what, um, crops did you have?"

"Most of the same ones we have now.  We had corn, which was not a very-not very successful.  So we ended up dropping that."

********************************* 

"So your CSA has grown a lot, how many members do you have now?"

"We have about 90-100, 90, something like that.  We measure that full share equivalents, even though we (mumble.)  And we go up to 50 full share equivalents, which would in half shares would be 100 half shares.  So most people buy half shares."

"Wow. So, you’ve been…you’ve been in-on this land for 14 years then."

"Yeah."

"Yeah.  Do you think you’re gonna’ stay here for a long time?"

"Yes, I do. I think I’m gonna’ go away a bunch, not a bunch, but I think I’m gonna’ go away as well.  But I don’t have any plans of moving away, and if I do it will be for a year.  I don’t have any plans of giving this place up."

"Did you build this house?"

"Umn-hum."

"By yourself?"

"Sort of. Well, no.  I hired all the skilled help because I don’t have any building skills.  So I designed it and I bought the materials, and I made decisions on how to do stuff, and I helped, I made the siding, because I can put boards through planer, that kind of stuff.  I finished the wood, I insulated it, I helped put the floor in, I helped with stuff."

"Um-hum.  Do you have an upstairs, like a loft?"

"There’s a teeny loft there, this is an attic.  Over there is a-a room that, totally unfinished, it has a skylight and 2 little windows, and no access, except go up the ladder and through the attic.  So it’s expandable, right now it’s just storage.  But you could probably put a-some stuffs in here if you really needed it, but I don’t need it, for a living space for myself.  This is plenty big."

"So can you describe a typical weekday, for yourself?"

"Oh, boy, that’s hard, ‘cause it’s never, nothing’s typical.  Um, well, I wake up, I guess, generally I wake up…in the winter it’s more like 7:30 or 8, in the summer it’s more like 6:30...OK, so, I always just lay around until I feel like getting up, so, sometimes I ya’ know, depending on how late I, sometimes I stay up pretty late.  So, anyway, during the summer I’m usually pretty awake by 6:30 or 7, and I’m getting up out of bed by 7 or 7:30, somewhere in there, depending on harvest days, I have to be at work at 7. and when I have apprentices, I really have to be at work at 8 or 7, depending on the day, so I’m a lot better about that.  But I always wake up, I never need an alarm.  And in this-ya’ know that bedroom..."

"Yeah, the sun wakes you up.  [Her bedroom is full of windows.]"

"And I love it!  Even if I don’t wanna’ get up and I wanna’ sleep, I love the contact with the light and knowing what time it is.  I would hate to have a dark room or be dark, even if I wanna’ sleep late, I would never want that."

"And it’s better for your circadian rhythm."

"I guess so, yeah.  I mean that’s what they say, I guess that’s what it is.  I get up and I eat, and then I putter around a little bit, and then I go out to work.  And I often have ideas of what I wanna’ do, sometimes I don’t have a lot of ideas, I just, it’s a lot of vague ideas, and I don’t figure it out exactly what I’m gonna do until I get there.  I have a lot-well maybe not vague ideas, but lots of ideas that I don’t know what’s priority.  I have an idea of what’s priority, but so often when I see what’s out there, my priorities change, so I no longer have a real set list, a to-do list that I just follow.  (cough)  Because it just doesn’t work, and I’m not really geared that way anyway, so, I used to fight with it and I used to think, 'Oh I need to know what I have to do and write it down and follow my list.'  And it never worked.  And I don’t fight it anymore, I just go where it seems like it needs to be done, and I tend to-I seem to get away with it, it seems to work, still.  (laughs)  So I think of it as intuitive,…more than…learning, you know, or how to figure out what to do and when.  Um, a lot of times it’s really obvious in the garden." 

"I guess, and since you’re working a lot with plants, I mean, they know when they need to do things, so they do them and then you respond."

"Yeah, and you can, well, part of what I have to do is walk around and look at everything.  And then, that’s when my priorities really adjust, ‘cause I’ll have these priorities in my head, and I’ll look and I’ll think, “Well, maybe that doesn’t really need it, but this over here really does, ‘cause I just noticed that it did, I didn’t know it before, so, that can change my idea of what to do.  And then, like today I was disking, and the disk broke, so that changes your whole..."

"What is disking?"

"Disking, it’s like a tilling, it’s a preparing of soil.  And so, whenever something breaks, that changes your day."

"Right."

(D&P laugh)

"And then Ron changes my day too, ‘cause he has needs, he has a lot of customers right now, and he needs help, ya’ know loading bags and this and that, and so..."

"And he doesn’t do the CSA, he just sells from the farm."

"Right, he does, yeah, he also maintains everything on the farm.  (coughs)  He does all the tractor equipment, and all the painting on the buildings, and…as well as, runs the products business."

The following experts are from our second interview.

"So you’re getting ready for the CSA, huh?"

"Um-hum, planting."

"When do you start planting stuff?"

"We planted, I planted peas about 2 weeks ago.  I haven’t seen them above ground yet, but I dug up a few and they’re germinating.  And then just a few days ago we planted plants of bok choy and Chinese cabbage, and they’re out there enjoying this rain."

"It’s good rain."

"Yeah.  And the greenhouse is full and overflowing and spilling out into the…"

"With seedlings and stuff?"

"Yeah, and what happens is they come outside, and they’re let outside for a little while before they get planted in the garden.  So I have this little area behind the greenhouse that I put stuff in, and I built these crushers, where I can cover them with white fabric so that if it gets to be a really cold night, I’ll cover them and they won’t get quite so cold. But it’s all stuff that can freeze, that can get a light frost anyway and it won’t damage it, so its just hardening them off before it can go into the ground."

"Do you have your apprentices, are they here yet?"

"We have one apprentice who’s not here yet, she’s coming in May.  And the other…we don’t have another one yet.  We had 2 people be accepted, and they both decided to do other things.  And we just, last week I called another woman and I talked to her, and Ron had talked to her on the phone, and we had decided to accept her, and she said she would let us know by the end of this week…"

"And the end of the week is Friday." (this was a Sunday)

"…and I haven’t heard from her so I’m afraid she’s not gonna’ do it."

(We have been talking about local intentional communities.)

"Yeah, it is…There’s a lot of attempt at community, and different styles, and different ways of coming together to work on stuff and be together.  And there’s a bit of failure, and some success, you know, I think that we, have lost, we’re kind of a generation or two away from real community building skills, community making skills, and we don’t really know how to do it, I think we’re kind of handicapped, in that way.  So I just really applaud the attempt, when I see people doing it, even when I see a lot of problems, but no more than if you’re not doing community."  (laughs)

"Right, do you ever think about having a community here?"

"I do, yeah, I um, I’m not an organizer, so intentional community is probably not gonna’ happen, but I would love to have another 1 or 2 people or families living on this farm and utilizing the land, and raising livestock, raising fruit, maybe, or just different things that I’m not doing.  Maybe I could do that.  I like being in a community with Ron.  It’d be really different if Ron wasn’t here and I was here by myself.  It’d be really way different than just having one other person, and Heidi’s here now…"

"And that’s his girlfriend?"

"Yeah, I love having her here…"

"Does she work on the farm?"

"No, but she’s and avid gardener, and she has 2 mules.  So she likes, ya’ know, she’s involved with the land, she just doesn’t make a living on it.  And then when the apprentices are here, I mean, it does become kind of a small community."

"That is a community, yeah."

"We have potlucks together, and stuff, and meetings.  So, I like that, a lot.  I’ve really appreciated the people that we’ve had here for apprentices.  It’s been really fun to have them…a lot of intelligence, and they just add a lot."

"And they’re different people, so they have different ideas, and can bring things…"

(We talk at once and drown one another out.)

"Yeah, some of them have been apprentices other places and have worked on other farms so they can tell me how other farms do stuff.  (laughs)  That’s really helpful, ‘cause I haven’t had the chance to go out and apprentice on other farms. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out how to do stuff, and there’s people out there doing it all different kinds of innovative ways…"  (trails off)

"So, the CSA is like, your thing, and then you have your employees, and then Ron does…?"

"The catalogue business."

"…like, he sells, like, seeds, and equipment…"

"Fertilizer, pest control stuff a little bit to the farmers here.  Yeah, that’s kind of how we’ve divided up our jurisdictions.  And then, as far as the land goes, we kind of do that together, and that goes into the land, and building new buildings, or, ya’ know, or getting new equipment, or…"

"‘Cause you both have different skills."

"Yeah."

...