A Job

My girl Pokey. 

I accepted a job offer today.  A (nearly) full-time position as a kitchen director at the local preschool.  I don't have too many of the details yet, but the pay is decent and the hours (9-3ish M-F) would work well with part-time farm work (plenty of time for chores during the daylight before and after work).  The school has a commitment to serving healthy, organic, vegetable based meals to its students.  My primary responsibilities will be to prepare breakfast and lunch for about 200 students, as well as frozen dinners for their parents to bring home.

We'll see how it goes tomorrow morning, when I meet with the staff and learn more specifics.  I enjoy working with kids and working in the kitchen.  There is also a school vegetable garden, and they are looking to add cooking and gardening classes to the curriculum once I get adjusted, which would be a lot of fun.

I'd love to say that I'm really excited, but I'm just not.  It's a job.  And even though it has the potential to be really fun and to provide a stable contribution to the mortgage (more than 1/2 of the annual payment), it feels like a step away from the farm.  I think it will be really good and hopefully only for the short term, but it delays my dream of farming full-time on my own land.  And it puts a bit of a damper on my retirement.  I've been really enjoying all of my free-time the past two months!

Saphera (the grey chicken) is recovering fine!  She spent the morning grazing around the yard with the rest of the flock.