Today Aby and I began a Permaculture Design Course with Toby Hemenway in Portland. Yes- THE Toby Hemenway!! Our text books at the new edition of Gaia's Garden, The Permaculture Design Manual and Edible Forest Gardens I & II. It is fantastic so far. Not entirely what I was expecting but fantastic. I learned more today then the entire  last PDC I took. The only good thing that came out of that class was the friends I met. Anyway I have high hopes for this one and when it's over Aby will be an amazing permaculture designer too and our farm will be amazing.

      The Farmers Market was literally right outside the window so we were treated to some awesome background music and fresh fruits and veggies for lunch. Portland is soooo cool. I am loving it here.

Well, I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

I'll leave you with this last thought, from Larry Santoyo, one of my favorite permaculturists.

"The time has come to do EPIC SHIT"

As you all probably know Aby and I have been spending way more time in Portland than Reno lately. Our poor Realtor has taken us to tons of places. As we were working through this process we contacted the FSA to make sure we were still on to get the loan money we needed to buy the farm. Unfortunately even though the FSA is a federal program it is run by individual states and counties and the counties in Oregon don't care that the counties in California were going to give you a loan. In fact they really don't have time to talk to you at all. Oh, and their funding just got slashed- by a lot. So I am sitting there trying to point out the pertinent information on our business plan and the FSA lady is giving me a strange look. Finally she inquires as to why I think they would give us any money. Huh? What!? I explain again about how we were approved in California. How they loved us in California! She says, and I am of course paraphrasing at this point, "so go to California." So I crawled under her desk and sobbed until she felt so sorry for me that she gave me tons of money and asked me to leave. Oh wait, no I just wanted to do that. I actually sat and stared at her until she explained that we were just too small and too diversified to qualify for money. If I wanted a bazillion dollars to start a 200 acres grass seed farm or a lovely christmas tree farm then we could talk. But small diversified farms are the future of farming I say. But the farmers are aging and we are young and excited I say. But I can NOT leave here and tell Aby we are screwed I say!!!
    So I leave the FSA and calmly try and think of plan B on the way home. That was two months ago. So here is plan B. Instead of going after traditional financing we have been looking for property and then approaching the owners about owner financing options. A couple awesome people have been interested and many laughed so hard they peed a little. Two places that looked most promising have fallen through and Aby and I continue to drive back and forth to Reno to check on the cows. Who are doing quite well by the way.  We have people all over the state looking for land and looking for funding. And we explain who we are and that we are so very serious about this over and over again. Then last week I find read comment on a blog that was connected to the Rodale Institute and we find out about this Friends of Family Farmers thing. It turns out that they help people like us find people who have land. OMG! So we have contacted them and we are hoping for a miracle.