Walkable Communities, Herbal Medicine and my Latest Mid-life Crisis

A farm/bed and breakfast we stayed at in southeastern Minnesota last summer.

Can you call it a mid-life crisis if you're only 37? When do these things actually start? When George and I got married, he was 35 and I was 24. I loved telling him that I was his mid-life crisis. It was so reassuring to me that he'd chosen me to "run off with", and gave me hope that he wouldn't run off with some floozy at age 50. We'd still be happily in love by then, right? Well, he's almost there and all signs look good and stable for our marriage.

Except, that I'm now 37 and not sure what to do with my life. Well, sort of. I have some ideas. Too many, perhaps. Mostly I still want to be a homemaker, stay-at-home, homeschooling mom. But I have other interests too. For example, today I had my first *real* paying herbal consultation with an actual client today. I made some money! And I loved it. And I think the herbs we picked out are going to help my client. And it's a home business and that's what I want to do. I think.


It felt really good to finally take a paying client, after two years of hemming and hawing about starting my business. Immediately after our appointment, I printed out about 15 copies of the "Lisa Zahn, Herbalist" brochure I'd typed up and had sitting in my computer for months. I'm ready to distribute them. And then I went to Office Depot to look into business cards. I'm going to order some in the next few days, after I set up a new email account and maybe a blog or website just for my Herbalist practice.


I'm excited about this!


But then there's this other thing. Just yesterday I mailed off an inquiry letter to Easy Bean Farm in Milan, Minnesota. It's an organic CSA farm in Southwestern Minnesota that hires interns to learn and help with the farm work for the summer. I wrote to see if they'd be interested in hiring and putting up our family for the summer. Crazy? Yes, especially since I'd just gotten the idea the day before. But that's me! Impulsive! Go with my gut! Get excited about it and go for it! (And then get a little scared after the fact.) Luckily, I have an extremely supportive and "game" husband. He said I should at least mail the letter. It can't hurt to look into something, right? And he's willing to move to the country for the summer, no problem. Isn't he great?

Dreaming of the country...

We would both love to work on a farm and see how it goes. We've always thought we might like to have a small organic farm. I would love to have a bigger garden, some chickens, maybe a dairy cow and a couple goats, and perhaps bees for honey. But are we really up to the task? Or do we enjoy the city life too much? Frankly, we both believe that to make a sustainable society a lot of people need to live in the city, in highly dense housing. And we like that just fine. But there's always that longing for the country.


We'd love for the kids to experience country life. Work on a farm. Explore the fields and woods. Really see the stars at night and learn the patterns of the moon and sun. (Heck, I really want that for me. I've always lived in a town or city.) George grew up at least partly in the country. And his parents moved there when he was about the age our kids are. It's not unheard of.


So, we're going to explore it. If it works out. The Easy Bean Farm is just one option. We've met the Easy Bean's farmers at the Green Living Expo and think we'd get along great. There are so many other possible farms, though. I've only started to look into it. We'll see how it goes...


I'll keep you posted on my latest hare-brained idea as we learn more. Two more nice things about it are that the farm is close to my grandmas whom we'd love to visit more, and that I can find lots of herbs and plants to make remedies with on a farm. I am sure I'm going to keep my herb practice up, whether in city or country...


The other big thing I did today was go on a walking tour of my city. Mark Fenton, who called himself "America's Walking Geek" and who used to have a PBS show called America's Walking, is in town for a big conference on healthy communities tomorrow. I'm unable to attend the conference so I attended a shorter talk and walk today. It was really great! We live in the heart of our small city and I'm very interested in sustainable, walkable, healthy cities. St. Cloud does a pretty good job of this, but we also have our hideous strips of mini-malls, big box stores, parking deserts, too many fast-moving cars and the like. I'm glad our city is open to other possibilties. Maybe I'll write more on that later.


For now, I'm tired. It was a big day! Time to watch Corner Gas, our latest favorite show. Our neighbor from Canada pointed it out to us. Check it out sometime!


Peace, Lisa