27

Kristin picked up a new book today. When I got home I picked it up and browsed through the introduction. It was a book about how to live your life the way you want to. The beginning of the introduction described in brief the process by which the author got his book published. Twenty-six publishers turned him down and even after the book was signed he was told that it would never sell. The odds were against him, statistics never lie. Five days after the book was released it was on the New York Times Best seller list. Eventually it became number one.

Sometimes I feel like that author after 26 rejections. The lifestyle that I want to live seems years away. We want to grow a garden, have a small farm where we don't just grow soybeans and #2 corn. Sometimes making it happen seems economically improbable. Everything else seems to get in the way of what we really want to do.

Sometimes we fail. This year a quarter of the land that we tilled for the garden went to weeds and without equipment it is slow work reclaiming it. Its late in the season. We are getting ready to plant hard-skin squash for the fall. Every time I want to go work at the garden it means forty minutes of driving.

In a lot of ways we failed this year. But there were a lot of peas and lettuce. There is plenty of squash, and there will be tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, potatoes, onions and more. Next year will be more organized. Seedling trays will be labeled better and a clear schedule will be followed. Our greenhouse will be sturdy and not succumb to the wind. We've come a long way from the garden that we grew up in. We were losing a hundred sweet potatoes to White-tails every year and trying to grow carrots in rocky soil. We have a long way to go.

Timothy Ferriss author of the number one New York Times best seller, The 4-Hour Workweek never gave up. Twenty-six publishers told him his book was not worth their time. Someday we'll find our twenty-seven. In the meantime we'll get really good at squashing bugs and pulling weeds.