Cleaning up some debris yesterday in the hoop house prior to planting peppers, I was struck by just how much we have accomplished in 21 years — 7,929 days — on the farm. We bought the property in September of 1999. At that time, the 70 acres possessed an ancient and broken perimeter fence, an industrial-size white metal barn, and a three-car garage. Partly in an effort to avoid more work, and also in a self-congratulatory mode, I sat down this morning and pulled together some numbers that reflect the time and effort we’ve invested to date.

• 16,480 feet (3.1 miles) of perimeter fencing installed, all of which required removing the intertwined old fencing, trees, brambles and vines.
• 8,240 feet (1.6 miles) of permanent cross-fencing added.
• 1,648 T-posts set.
• 248 wooden post holes dug and set three feet deep.
• 98,880 feet (18.7 miles) of barbed wire unspooled, stretched, and attached to the posts.
• 6,600 feet (1.5 miles) of Red Brand field fence installed.
• 1,022 feet of hog panels erected for a 1.5-acre hog paddock in the woods.
• 6 tractors bought, most of them long since sold.
• 7 pickups owned.
• 420 chickens butchered.
• 165 pigs raised for slaughter.
• 1,000 lambs reared.
• 100 cattle raised.
• 2 orchards planted.
• 3 small grape plots planted.
• 36 shade trees planted.
• 23 ornamental shrubs planted.
• 12 nut trees planted.
• 37 farm gates hung.
• 1 25×50’ hoop house built.
• 5,000 garden plants set, tended, and harvested.
• 2 farrowing huts built.
• 6 permanent lambing stalls erected.
• 2 hay barns constructed.
• 1 sawmill shed built.
• 1 wellhouse/smokehouse built.
• 2 chicken coops built. The first and smallest now houses beekeeping and livestock health supplies.
• 1 farm equipment shed constructed.
• 1 potting shed built.
• 1 workshop created.
• 1 guest apartment created.
• 1 house constructed.
• 252 times that the gravel driveway (3/10 of a mile) has been graded.
• 336 days spent bushhogging fields.
• 126 days spent haying.
• 3,360 hours spent working in the garden.
• 7,929 sunrises and sunsets that have come and gone.
• 283 full moons that have brightened the night.
• 6 dinners enjoyed at the top of the hill.
• 3,528 dinners eaten outside.
• 1,126 times one of us has said to the other, “This is too much work.”
• 7,929 times one of us has thought, What a lovely and a lucky way to live.

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Reading this weekend: the somewhat annual rereading of Beowulf (Seamus Heaney translation).