Every adventure has an origin story. This adventure we call Tramonto took its first steps in 2016. Adam had just started his new career as a physician assistant and we had just brought home our fourth child while renting a three-bedroom cape cod house in Glen Allen. The ache for more space wrestled with the desire to live lean and pay off our mound of student debt. We patiently watched the real estate market and frequently toured homes in every corner of our city, learning the neighborhoods and desirable areas we never knew of in the city we both grew up in. We searched the suburbs, the city hot spots, and occasionally toured the countryside. Houses came and went and we were patient as we imagined each listing as the home we planned to raise our children in, perhaps a long-term home, and just maybe a forever home. We exhausted our friend and real estate agent. Sensing the endless and fruitless home tours, he passed us onto his new assistant. In one week we would focus our search in the city and the next week in the suburbs. And then, on one tour of three homes in the country, we had an experience. Our young children liked to recall the three houses we visited as “the one with the pool,” “the one on the lake,” and “the one with all the trash.”
On a cool November afternoon, the shadows grew long as we pulled in to take in a potential property on 10 acres. We were greeted by abandoned cars off the side of the driveway, a large mound of trash in the backyard, and a house that bore signs of a few years of neglect. As we stepped out of the car, we turned away from the house and looked across the front field to take in our first sunset in Studley. Before we even grasped the extent of the house's poor condition, there was a sense while watching the sun drift below the treeline, that this was the place. Whatever it looked like inside, it was worth the numerous contractors, buckets of paint and late DIY nights just to take in that sunset again. Once we turned back to assess the house, we realized that the electricity had been shut off, and after the sun had set, we were left to tour the house under the light of our iphone flash lights. It was a fixer-upper, for sure. The original 1981 carpet had worn down in the walkways to reveal hardwood underneath. It had potential and spurred on by Chip and Joanna, any dream was possible with a demo day and a somewhat flexible budget. So after a few days of deliberation, we decided to make an offer and took a giant leap on the “one with all the trash”.
We spent the first three months after getting the keys to our new home tackling the long list of projects. It was 2017 and someone else’s adventure had just started, too. Justin Rhodes of Youtube vlogging fame was posting videos of his family’s “Great American Farm Tour” daily. From this series of videos and farm visits across all 50 states, we endeavored on a sort of virtual farming crash course. On certain farm tours that piqued our interest, we would dive into a nitty gritty of each of those various farm enterprises. Everything from permaculture orchards, chicken tractors, biointensive planting, and regenerative agriculture. 2017 was a year with a healthy diet of life and work on a farm. Justin’s family adventures became our farming 101 with a kind of “you can do this, too” mantra and after a year of vicarious exploration, we felt like we had a degree in basic farming knowledge.
That same year, we also stumbled upon the Chicken Thistle Farm podcast which served up the real life experiences of Farmer Andy and Dr. Kelli who gave us some real life experiences in chickens, pigs, and the general ups and downs of running a small farm. We took this inspiration and ran with it. We started with ducks, then egg layers, then turkeys. Next, we brought home sheep and goats in the back of our minivan. Orchards were planted and garden beds were designed. We built chicken tractors and learned how a wiz bang chicken plucker worked. Initially, we, or should I say Adam’s, main vision was a sustainable meat and egg production farming model with regenerative agricultural practices encouraged by Virginia resident and regenerative meat production guru Joel Salatin of Polyface farms.
But we weren’t solely focused on animals. We were also very excited about large spaces for gardens. Greatly attracted to the farming prowess of JM Fortier and The Market Gardener book, we learned methods for no-till bed preparation, biointensive bed sizing, companion planting, crop rotation, beneficial insect, and wind breaks. We thought we might start a CSA. Then, we had another child, and then another. With both of us working full-time jobs, caring for our six young children, the school activities, the soccer practices – the work of these inspiring farmers we were learning from did not meet the patterns of life for our growing family. We left many vegetables to ripen and rot in the fields and we felt like we had failed in most of our early enterprises. But along the way, we noticed something beautiful. Do you know what looks nice in the field even if it doesn’t get harvested? Flowers. That is a whole story inside a story involving our shift to growing flowers that will live on in another journal entry.
Once upon a time, our farm adventure started with a moment – leaning on the fence, mesmerized while watching the sunset. And so, we named our farm Tramonto, Italian for sunset. Since that first viewing, we’ve gazed upon and pondered hundreds of Tramonto sunsets – each influencing our hearts and inspiring new ideas.
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