Hey all, I'M ALIVE! I'm a little late on the update, but I have high speed winds taking out the Internet and crazy farm chores to blame. We also have very limited Internet time out here at Future Pointe Farm, so let me get right to it...
A few weeks ago, I traveled an hour east of Colorado Springs to the heart of middle-of-nowhere, Colorado. Located 70 miles from the nearest gas station, out on a ranch that is a beautiful cross between prairie and desert, lives Brendan McCrann, director of FPF and leader of the Teilhard de Chardin homestead program. Not counting the animals, there are just five of us living out here: Brendan, co-director and Regis alum Tim, myself, and two fellow Regis students, Claudia and Gianna. Three weeks in and I already love this group more than words can express. There's something about dishing out pig slop together at 7am every morning that just brings people together.
Future Pointe Farm, situated on the Brett Grey Ranch, is sustainable waste management program run by Brendan under the director of his awesome guide, Philip. FPF intercepts hundreds of thousands of pounds of waste from Colorado Springs every year and processes the goods into compost, animal feed, and recyclable materials. As a result, the farm puts out only a couple hundred pounds of waste every year (compared the the thousands it takes in), provides feed for all the animals here as well as a couple of neighboring ranches, and is almost completely sustainable, meaning we get almost all the food and water we need here. Yay for the harvest garden, freezers full of pork, and fresh eggs every morning!
For those of you who weren't lucky enough to visit for the Pig Roast a couple weeks ago, here's what a normal day at FPF looks like: wake up at 7am for chores, which is feeding all the animals and cleaning out feed buckets. After breakfast, we head out to one of a few stations to process the totes of waste that Philip delivers every week. In Lower Barn, we crack through boxes of pasta, crackers, Pop Tarts (true story), oatmeal, and other grain and oat products to make buckets and buckets of goat and pig feed. In Upper Barn, we open thousands of cans at a time of soups, vegetables, beans, tomato sauce (which always get hot and explode so it looks like we're covered in blood), and condensed milk to make chicken feed and Premium Pig Slop, yes it has a name. Other areas of work include the garden, the animals pens, and HTP, Hard To Process, when we use spatulas to scrape out jars of mayo, salsa, salad dressing and syrup into compost and more pig slop.
If you aren't already jealous of my twelve-hour days baking under the hot sun, smelling like moldy food, tending to animals and hauling 5 gallon buckets like it's no big deal, let me paint you another picture... We are a part of a cohesive food system that takes what others have deemed worthless and turns it into meditative work, food for animals we love (except the goat...I hate the goat.), three square meals a day, hours and hours blasting Brendan's record collection and singing and dancing, exploring 50,000 acres of prairie, telling stories playing games swapping sweat and growing together in a solid, spiritual community that would make our namesake proud. If you don't know who Teilhard de Chardin is, Google it. The happiness to be found in such a work place in this vast, glorious space is one I haven't experienced ever before. I'm reminded a lot of the ocean (home sweet home), if entire farm ecosystems could exist out at sea.
All this to say, I'm happy here. I love these people. I love the animals. I love the awareness. I love the space. We eat well, we never shower (well, we just finished building our outdoor shower, so maybe I'll start doing that soon...), I've developed weird skills like climbing fences very fast (when Mama Pig runs at you, she runs) and ripping open Top Ramen with my bare hands. On any given day, I've got slop on my face, sauce on my hands, mayonnaise on my pants... but God, I do really love this place.
