T
he first sound I hear is crunching gravel. Starting a run half asleep isn’t always a bad thing—there’s an ethereal electricity of waking up bathed in moonlight to find your feet moving beneath you. I log so many pre-dawn miles that I usually don’t
remember dressing myself and the sound of my phone alarm rolls into a waking dream of pure habit. By the time I crest the ridgeline at the top of our lush, wooded valley, a choir of a million insects and birds fills the air, at their loudest volume right before daybreak. I know I only have 90 minutes until I have to shift from runner to farmer, so I push out any thoughts of harvesting, planting or the mass of emails waiting for me.
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“My mind is always overwhelmed with ideas and possibilities, a sense of busyness ever present in farming, but quelled by running. The real reason for all of my brute effort, both in farming and running, is an attempt to satiate my desire to live deeply in our natural world, not as a bystander watching safely from a climate controlled environment.” I've been farming alongside my husband and his family for a decade and our Community Supported Agriculture farm (CSA) was one of the pioneers of the sustainable farming movement in the Midwest. Located in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, Vermont Valley Community Farm, named for the Town of Vermont in Wisconsin where we are located, feeds thousands of families in the greater Madison area. The farm has been instrumental in educating young farmers who've gone on to start their own operations, becoming an institution dedicated to improving the food system beyond our own production. I dart off the road and into the dark forest, flipping on my headlamp as my feet hit the single-track. I’m fully awake now and it’s time to shred my home trails. I live, farm and run in the Driftless Region of southwestern Wisconsin. The craggy rock formations, tight valleys and unrelenting hills were untouched by the glaciers of the last ice age. Starting from my front porch, I can reach a thousand feet of vertical gain in two miles, defying the notion that Wisconsin is a flat state.
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